~Improving Access to Information and Serving the ‘Instant Satisfaction’ Expectations of Students Help The Polytechnic of Namibia Choose EBSCO Discovery Service™ ~

IPSWICH, Mass. — January 18, 2010 — The Polytechnic of Namibia (Polytechnic) has selected EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) from EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO). The Polytechnic was looking to improve access to information as well as increase the usage of library resources.

Research is an important part of the curriculum for students and essential for the staff at the Polytechnic. The library staff selected EDS to make it easier for users to find resources via a single search box. The library also chose EDS in order to increase the usage of online resources by all students. The student body at the Polytechnic is made up of full-time, part-time and distance students—more than 11,000 students combined. The Polytechnic was looking to make sure the service they chose would improve access to information for distance students since they often do not have a well-stocked library close by.

The Polytechnic has worked with EBSCO for nearly 14 years. Chief Librarian at the Polytechnic Library Judy Grobler says the long working relationship and the ability of EDS to pull together print and electronic resources for the end user helped the Polytechnic make its decision to use EDS. “The working relationship between EBSCO and the Polytechnic Library is built on trust and we have faith in the excellence of their products. With the culture of ‘instant satisfaction’ among our users today, we have no doubt that EDS will be the answer to their information access needs.”

EBSCO Discovery Service creates a unified, customized index of an institution’s information resources, and an easy, yet powerful means of accessing all of that content from a single search box—searching made even more powerful because of the quality of metadata and depth and breadth of coverage.

The Base Index for EBSCO Discovery Service forms the foundation upon which each EDS subscribing library builds out its custom collection. Beginning with the Base Index, each institution extends the reach of EDS by adding appropriate resources including its catalog, institutional repositories, EBSCOhost and other databases, and additional content sources to which it subscribes. It is this combination that allows a single, comprehensive, custom solution for discovering the value of any library’s collection.

The EDS Base Index is comprised of metadata from the world’s foremost information providers. At present, the EDS Base Index represents content from approximately 20,000 providers in addition to metadata from another 70,000 book publishers. Although constantly growing, today the EDS Base Index provides metadata for nearly 50,000 magazines & journals, approximately 825,000 CDs & DVDs, nearly six million books, more than 100 million newspaper articles, more than 20,000 conference proceedings and hundreds of thousands of additional information sources from various source-types.

About EBSCO Publishing
EBSCO Publishing is the world’s premier database aggregator, offering a suite of more than 300 full-text and secondary research databases. Through a library of tens of thousands of full-text journals, magazines, books, monographs, reports and various other publication types from renowned publishers, EBSCO serves the content needs of all researchers (Academic, Medical, K-12, Public Library, Corporate, Government, etc.). The company’s product lines include proprietary databases such as Academic Search™, Business Source®, CINAHL®, DynaMed™, Literary Reference Center™, MasterFILE™, NoveList®, SocINDEX™ and SPORTDiscus™ as well as dozens of leading licensed databases such as ATLA Religion Database™, EconLit, Inspec®, MEDLINE®, MLA International Bibliography, NISC™, The Philosopher’s Index™, PsycARTICLES® and PsycINFO®. Databases are powered by EBSCOhost®, the most-used for-fee electronic resource in libraries around the world. EBSCO is the provider of EBSCO Discovery Service™ a core collection of locally-indexed metadata creating a unified index of an institution’s resources within a single, customizable search point providing everything the researcher needs in one place—fast, simple access to the library’s full text content, deeper indexing and more full-text searching of more journals and magazines than any other discovery service (www.ebscohost.com/discovery). For more information, visit the EBSCO Publishing Web site at: www.ebscohost.com, or contact: information@ebscohost.com.

EBSCO Publishing is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., one of the largest privately held companies in the United States.
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