2/14/2011
CONTACT:
Nathan Curulla
(888) 900-8944
sales@bywatersolutions.com

Freeport Community Library of Freeport, ME. Partners with ByWater Solutions for Koha Support and Implementation

ByWater Solutions, an open source community supporter and official Koha support company, announced today that Freeport Community Library of Freeport, ME. has partnered with them for their implementation and support of the Koha ILS.

The library's Koha installation is scheduled to go live by the end of February, and they have partnered with ByWater Solutions for ongoing support services.

Beth Edmonds, Director of the Freeport Community Library, commented on their decision to switch to Koha and ByWater Solutions by saying "We have been very excited about our move to ByWater Solutions for a Koha installation. Their support has been terrific!"

Brendan Gallagher, CEO of ByWater stated: "Having spent many summers of my youth in Freeport, I am very excited to have the chance to partner with Beth and the staff of the Freeport Community Library. I can't wait to visit the area again soon! In addition, the fact that they are utilizing a 10.1 kilowatt solar electricity system in their library further exemplifies how this library is on the cutting edge."

Freeport Community Library houses over 45,000 bibliographic titles and they are slated to go live in late February of 2011.

About Freeport Community Library:
The Freeport Community Library is pleased to provide a broad range of services to our diverse clientele. From wireless internet access to story time for toddlers, monthly artist exhibits to inter-library loans to Freeport history and genealogy research, the Freeport Community Library is here to serve you. For more information, please visit: http://www.freeportlibrary.com

About Koha:
Koha is the first open-source Integrated Library System (ILS). In use worldwide, its development is steered by a growing community of libraries collaborating to achieve their technology goals. Koha's impressive feature set continues to evolve and expand to meet the needs of its user base. It includes modules for circulation, cataloging, acquisitions, serials, reserves, patron management, branch relationships, and more.

Koha’s OPAC, circulation, management and self-checkout interfaces are all based on standards-compliant World Wide Web technologies--XHTML, CSS and Javascript--making Koha a truly platform-independent solution. Koha is distributed under the open-source General Public License (GPL). For more information about Koha, please visit: http://www.koha-community.org

About ByWater Solutions:
With over 10 years of experience, ByWater Solutions offers customized hosting, data migration, configuration, installation, training, support options and development of enterprise class open-source library systems. Offering a 24/7 technical helpline, ByWater Solutions’ clients have the support system they need to make their software work for them. ByWater Solutions pledges to share 100% of all developed code to the Koha community for the strengthening and advancement of the Koha ILS. For more information about ByWater Solutions, please visit: http://www.bywatersolutions.com

~ Competency Watch™ Provides Evidence-Based Information to Companies Looking to Develop Core Competencies in Employees and Improve Organizational Performance~

IPSWICH, Mass. — February 10, 2011 — Corporate learning professionals have a new way to teach key professional competencies within their organizations.. Competency Watch™ from EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) is a new monitoring service that provides high-end, evidence-based information for companies to help employees at all levels develop core competencies—capabilities, skills, proficiencies, expertise and experience that add value to the company.

Leveraging competencies in employees, managers, and executives is essential to enhance individual effectiveness and develop leaders as well as to improve overall organizational performance. Competency Watch includes critical information regarding these professional competencies, information that is monitored and synthesized for rapid access and updated as new information becomes available. Competency Watch provides organizations with quick, concise, unbiased summaries that match their core competencies and helps employees build the skills and knowledge they need to help the company gain a competitive advantage.
Competency Watch includes more than 200 evidence-based reports covering all aspects of professional “soft skills” including:

• business strategy
• communications
• team building
• planning
• innovation
• entrepreneurship
• human resource management
• social responsibility
• finance
• diversity

Each report provides a definition and a summary pertaining to the competency as well as an investigation of how the competency applies to various individuals within the organization. A case study is also provided highlighting the real-life utility of each competency. Senior Director of Market Development for EBSCO Publishing Joe Tragert says this new resource both introduces essential soft skills and helps employees incorporate what they’ve learned. “Competency Watch is designed to accelerate the learning process by providing that baseline understanding of core soft skills. Once the learner has a basic grasp of the competency, it is much easier for them to apply the concepts to their daily job in the organization.”

Competency Watch has adapted EBSCO’s core evidence-based methodology to areas of interest to corporate executives. The evidence-based approach identifies, selects and systematically evaluates pertinent information and creates a synthesis of the best available evidence. EBSCO’s experience with evidence-based content includes the point-of-care resources it provides to hospitals and other medical institutions including the clinical decision support resource DynaMed™. EBSCO offers similar executive decision-support tools based on proprietary, evidence-based content with Corporate Learning Watch™, Food Industry Watch™ and Sustainability Watch™.

Competency Watch may be integrated into corporate portals and Intranets. The EBSCOhost® Integration Toolkit allows EBSCO’s content to be incorporated into an organization’s workflow—providing seamless access to premium content.

About EBSCO Publishing
EBSCO Publishing is the world’s premier database aggregator serving the content needs of corporations, associations and organizations of all types. EBSCO offers a suite of more than 300 full-text and secondary research databases providing content from tens of thousands of full-text journals, magazines, books, monographs, reports and various other publication types from renowned publishers. Databases provide information for areas ranging from research & development and corporate learning to departmental and industry-specific topics. EBSCO’s product lines include proprietary databases such as Business Source® Corporate, Business Book Summaries™, Learning Centers™, Business Basics™, Academic Search® R&D, Nonprofit Organization Reference Center™, and Health Library™ as well as dozens of leading licensed databases. Databases are powered by EBSCOhost®, the most-used for-fee electronic resource in libraries around the world, and may be integrated into corporate intranets, portals and learning management systems. 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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For more information, please contact:
Kathleen McEvoy
Public Relations Manager
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebscohost.com

~Improved Access to Full-Text Resources, a Simple Search Interface with Advanced Options and Mobile Access—National University Selects EBSCO Discovery Service~

IPSWICH, Mass. — February 8, 2011 — National University, the second-largest private, nonprofit institution of higher education in California and the flagship university of the National University System, has selected EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) from EBSCO Publishing to provide the University with a way to deliver its large collection to the end user and to make its library resources easier to find.

National University researched a variety of options from next generation catalogs to resource portals as well as discovery services—more than 11 products in all—as it sought to improve access to the library’s full-text resources. National University was looking to find an academic library resource that had a simple search interface but still had advanced options to limit search results.

National University’s librarians wanted a service that would provide users with more access to the library collection to better support research projects and assignments. Students were asking for a simple search experience that was closer to a traditional Web search. In deciding on EBSCO Discovery Service, the university was able to leverage its large eBook collection (more than 135,000 titles) and search the full-text of its collection alongside research databases and other library resources.

Senior Analyst for Research and Electronic Resources at the National University Library, Betty Kellogg, says EBSCO Discovery Service proved itself in side-by-side trials with other services. “In our trials with test databases we received more full-text relevant results with EBSCO Discovery Service than other products.”

While relevancy was an important differentiator, the strong metadata available within EDS, its ease of access and the customizability were also important factors according to Kellogg. “We liked that resources such as JSTOR and LexisNexis Academic could be searched through EBSCO Discovery Service, reducing our silos of separate information and that EDS was available in a mobile version. The option to create links on the search page to preselected databases from any vendor or subject collections to help students focus their results was also appealing.”

EDS will be part of a new library website design and a key component of a library initiative to serve students accessing the library via mobile devises. Kellogg says EDS will allow students to search the library without needing to know the names and descriptions of all the databases in the collection. The library is anticipating an increase in database usage since students will be searching across all resources and returning more relevant results from underused or previously hard to find resources.

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 400,000 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, 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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For more information, please contact:
Kathleen McEvoy
Public Relations Manager
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebscohost.com

Farmington Hills, Mich., Feb. 7, 2011 — Gale, part of Cengage Learning, today announced the College and School editions of the AccessMyLibrary Android applications, which join the AccessMyLibrary School Edition application for the iPad that became available in early January. These latest additions complete Gale’s extensive line-up of AccessMyLibrary (AML) applications, which make Gale library resources accessible on the go from all major mobile devices.

As with previously announced apps, AML College and School Edition ask students to locate their school and then authenticate for the year. Both editions require a one-time password. College students can enter their school-issued email address to have the password sent to them, while students in grade, middle and high schools will have the password provided by their institution. Rather than sifting through internet sites that aren’t always reliable, students can access credible library reference sources in seconds with AML apps.

“Our primary mission is to advocate for libraries by increasing awareness of all the great resources they provide,” said Nader Qaimari, senior vice president, marketing, Cengage Learning. “With AccessMyLibrary apps now available for all devices in all markets, we are taking the library directly to users. More than 20,000 people have already downloaded these apps.”

In addition, Quick Response (QR) codes are also available for the new AML apps, as well as those previously announced. After downloading a QR code-scanning app, mobile phone users can scan the AML QR code with their barcode reader to be automatically taken to the Gale apps web site.

In December 2009, Gale launched its first AML application for the iPhone. Now the current selection of AML apps includes:
- AccessMyLibrary Public Edition for all iOS devices (iPhone, iPad and iTouch) and Android devices
- AccessMyLibrary School Edition for all iOS and Android devices
- AccessMyLibrary College Edition for all iOS and Android devices

AML apps for iOS devices can be downloaded from the iTunes store, and apps for Android devices can be downloaded from the Android Marketplace. All AML apps are free and additional information, including QR codes, posters, bookmarks and other library marketing resources can be found at http://www.gale.cengage.com/apps/.

For more information, please contact Kristina Massari at kristina.massari@cengage.com.

About Cengage Learning and Gale
Cengage Learning is a leading provider of innovative teaching, learning and research solutions for the academic, professional and library markets worldwide. Gale, part of Cengage Learning, serves the world's information and education needs through its vast and dynamic content pools, which are used by students and consumers in their libraries, schools and on the Internet. It is best known for the accuracy, breadth and convenience of its data, addressing all types of information needs – from homework help to health questions to business profiles – in a variety of formats. For more information, visit www.cengage.com or www.gale.com.

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February 7th 2011
CONTACT:
Nathan Curulla
(888) 900-8944
sales@bywatersolutions.com

The Massachusetts Library System Chooses ByWater Solutions For Koha Support

ByWater Solutions, an open source community supporter and official Koha support company, announced today that the Massachusetts Library System, of Waltham, Massachusetts has partnered with them for Koha support and hosting services.

The MLS' MassCat Koha catalog was transferred onto ByWater's servers in early January by ByWater Solutions' implementation team with very positive results.

Nora Blake, Manager of MassCat, commented on the MLS' decision to switch to ByWater's hosting and support services: "We were already using an open source solution and were looking for an improved hosting and support solution for our shared Koha system." She continues: "ByWater’s approach to hosting and supporting Koha systems is to offer the best service possible and to make sure their customers are satisfied. ByWater pays attention to controlling bugs and other system problems, they offer timely responses to questions and they do all of this with a friendly attitude. ByWater emphasizes good customer service, which was the most important aspect in our search for a vendor to host our Koha system and to provide us with support in using it."

Brendan Gallagher, CEO of ByWater stated: "We are thrilled to partner with Nora and the team of the Massachusetts Library System. MassCat was one of the earliest large scale library systems in the United States to adopt Koha, and is a shining example of Koha's versatility and scalability. We welcome the staff of the MLS and look forward to a long and productive partnership together."

The MassCat catalog is made up of roughly 70 libraries and houses over 480,000 bibliographic records. For more information and to search their online catalog, please visit: http://masscat.org

About the Massachusetts Library System:
The Massachusetts Library System, a state-supported collaborative, fosters cooperation, communication, innovation, and sharing among member libraries of all types. The MLS promotes equitable access to excellent library services and resources for all who live, work, or study in Massachusetts.

MassCat is a library catalog of holdings from school, medical, law, special and public libraries. The MassCat catalog contains materials from libraries with very diverse holdings. For more information please visit: http://www.masslibsystem.org

About Koha:
Koha is the first open-source Integrated Library System (ILS). In use worldwide, its development is steered by a growing community of libraries collaborating to achieve their technology goals. Koha's impressive feature set continues to evolve and expand to meet the needs of its user base. It includes modules for circulation, cataloging, acquisitions, serials, reserves, patron management, branch relationships, and more.

Koha’s OPAC, circulation, management and self-checkout interfaces are all based on standards-compliant World Wide Web technologies--XHTML, CSS and Javascript--making Koha a truly platform-independent solution. Koha is distributed under the open-source General Public License (GPL). For more information about Koha, please visit: http://www.koha-community.org

About ByWater Solutions:
With over 10 years of experience, ByWater Solutions offers customized hosting, data migration, configuration, installation, training, support options and development of enterprise class open-source library systems. Offering a 24/7 technical helpline, ByWater Solutions’ clients have the support system they need to make their software work for them. ByWater Solutions pledges to share 100% of all developed code to the Koha community for the strengthening and advancement of the Koha ILS. For more information about ByWater Solutions, please visit: http://www.bywatersolutions.com