~ Customer Feedback Plays Large Role in Choice of New Subjects ~

IPSWICH, Mass. — September 22, 2011 — EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) is announcing the release of 64 new eBook subject sets bringing the total number of subject sets to nearly 200. These additional subject sets reflect the rapid growth of EBSCO’s eBook collection offered to libraries in convenient collections grouped by subject matter.

Subject sets allow for quick and easy purchases in particular high-interest subject areas. Customer feedback played a large role in the development of some of the latest subject sets. Requests for particular subject areas prompted EBSCO to create many of the subject sets available in this September release. All of the subject sets were developed by a team of librarian collection development specialists.

Nine key collection areas were increased including: Arts & Humanities, Business, Information Technology, Medical, Personal Growth & General Education, Science & Technology, Social & Cultural Issues, Social Sciences and Vocational Education. The new subject sets provide an extensive array of subject matter including: American History, leadership & management, LGBT, social networking, nursing and teacher resources. A full list of the latest subject sets are available at: http://www.ebscohost.com/ebooks/subject-sets.

eBooks on EBSCOhost
eBooks on EBSCOhost offers nearly 300,000 eBooks and audiobooks. EBSCO is proactively soliciting new content in key areas and approximately 5,000 new titles are expected to be added each month. Find more information about the eBooks on the EBSCO Support Site: http://support.ebscohost.com/ebooks.

About EBSCO Publishing
EBSCO Publishing is the producer of EBSCOhost®, the world’s premier for-fee online research service, including full-text databases, subject indexes, point-of-care medical reference, historical digital archives, and eBooks. The company provides more than 350 databases and nearly 300,000 eBooks. Through a library of tens of thousands of full-text journals and magazines from renowned publishers, EBSCO serves the content needs of all researchers (Academic, Medical, K-12, Public Library, Corporate, Government, etc.). EBSCO is also the provider of EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS), which provides each institution with a fast, single search box for its entire collection, offering deeper indexing and more full-text searching of 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.

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

September 22nd, 2011
CONTACT:
Nathan Curulla
(888) 900-8944
sales@bywatersolutions.com

Six Libraries Partner to Bring Customizable Print Slips to Koha

ByWater Solutions, an open source community supporter and official Koha support company announced today that six of their library partners are joining forces to bring customizable print slips to the Koha ILS.

The libraries collaborating on this effort include:

The Northeast Kansas Library System of Lawrence, KS,
Wiggin Memorial Library of Stratham, NH,
Rolling Hills Consolidated Library of St Joseph, MO,
Los Gatos Public Library, of Los Gatos, CA,
San Benito Free Library of San Benito, CA,
Arcadia Public Library of Arcadia, CA.

ByWater Solutions will be partnering with Catalyst IT, of Wellington NZ on this development, making it a multi-state, multi-country collaborative effort.

The custom print slip development will make it easy for libraries to customize both the data that is displayed on their checkout and holds slips, as well as the formatting. Until now, any changes to the slips required edits to Koha's template code, which would then have to be maintained across upgrades. With this development, the local customizations will be stored in the database, and can be edited at any time by a staff member with suitable permissions.

Not only will all the basic patron information be available to display (or not to display, if you are concerned about privacy), but so will Extended Attributes, allowing the library to display the content that's truly relevant to their patrons.

Ian Walls, ByWater's Lead Development Specialist stated:

"I'm very excited to see so many of our partners getting together to make this development a reality. Every library has their own needs, and one of the great things about open source is that a bunch of libraries can work together to come up with a solution that will meet all their needs at once, saving time and money, not to mention making the software that much better for other libraries the world over"

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: www.koha-community.org

About ByWater Solutions:
With over 10 years of experience, ByWater Solutions offers customized hosting, data migration, configuration, installation, training, top ranked 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: www.bywatersolutions.com

~U.K. University expects EBSCO Discovery Service™ to Play Key Role in its Digital Library~

IPSWICH, Mass. — September 20, 2011 — The University of Cumbria in the United Kingdom has chosen EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) from EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) to play an integral role in bringing a readily accessible digital library to students. The University will use its implementation of EDS to provide on-and off-campus end users with the most efficient way to search multiple eResources from a single search box, and to offer seamless access to full-text results.

Since the implementation of EDS at the University of Cumbria, statistics have already shown an increase in the usage of eResources overall, and the University expects EDS to prove particularly useful to those students who study off campus, according to Michael Stanning, Information, Policy and Administration Manager at the University of Cumbria. “Students told us that using multiple electronic resources was confusing and time consuming. EDS provides them with a familiar Google-like interface by which to access much of the online licensed full-text content that the University subscribes to. This ease of access to online content is fundamental to our plans for a digital library,” says Stanning.

Stanning says the University’s decision to go with EDS was strongly influenced by the positive feedback EDS received from subject librarians in response to presentations and trials, as well as the solid relationship the University enjoys with EBSCO. He also noted that the Base Index associated with EDS contained many of the University’s key eResources, and Stanning cited the “amount and quality of results from the base index” as another deciding factor. He reports that students have found the system fast, easy to use and a real aid to research.

The University has taken advantage of the robust customization options available in EDS and the ability to create a unified branding image. The University has made EDS its own, running a student competition to find a new and original name. The result was Quest— branding it beyond the basics to align with corporate branding and giving what Stanning referred to as “an attractive look” to the portal.

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 producer of EBSCOhost®, the world’s premier for-fee online research service, including full-text databases, subject indexes, point-of-care medical reference, historical digital archives, and eBooks. The company provides more than 350 databases and nearly 300,000 eBooks. Through a library of tens of thousands of full-text journals and magazines from renowned publishers, EBSCO serves the content needs of all researchers (Academic, Medical, K-12, Public Library, Corporate, Government, etc.).EBSCO is also the provider of EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS), which provides each institution with a fast, single search box for its entire collection, offering deeper indexing and more full-text searching of 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.

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

9/20/2011
CONTACT:
Nathan Curulla
(888) 900-8944
sales@bywatersolutions.com

The College of the Redwoods Goes Live on Koha with ByWater Solutions

ByWater Solutions, an open source community supporter and official Koha support company, announced today that the College of the Redwoods, of Eureka, CA. is now live on their installation of the Koha integrated library system.

The College Library's Koha installation went live in July, and ByWater Solutions will be
providing ongoing support and hosting services for them.

Library staff at College of the Redwoods, stated "we are excited to be partnering with other libraries that are embracing open source technology."

The College has three primary campuses and several additional sites where courses and programs are offered to serve the education needs of Humboldt, Del Norte, coastal Mendocino, and western Trinity counties. The College of the Redwoods Library houses over 88,000 volumes. Their customized online catalog can be found at http://library.redwoods.edu/

About the College of the Redwoods:
College of the Redwoods puts student success first by providing outstanding developmental, career technical, and transfer education. The College partners with the community to contribute to the economic vitality and lifelong learning needs of its service area. We continually assess student learning and institutional performance and practices to improve upon the programs and services we offer. For more information, please visit: http://www.redwoods.edu/

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

EBSCO Releases Serials Price Projections for 2012

Birmingham, Ala. — Sept. 16, 2011 — Each year, EBSCO strives to help customers plan by projecting publisher price increases for the upcoming year. We use recent information received from both large and small publishers as well as historical price data to calculate these projections. While based upon careful analysis, we recommend that subscribers exercise caution when using these projections, as they rely on historical trends and current estimates.

2012 Price Projections

At the time of writing, we expect the overall effective publisher price increases for academic and academic/medical libraries for 2012 (before currency impact) to be in the range of 4 to 6 percent.

Commentary

Since the last publication of this report a year ago, the global economic environment has remained challenged, and our projections indicate 2012 publisher price increases consistent with last year in the mid single digits. Underneath this veneer of consistency, however, much change is afoot in the information industry for both publishers and librarians. These emerging trends are a response to the seemingly permanent economic challenges faced by librarians and publishers as well as the result of new and innovative technologies.

On the library side, budgets remain under extreme pressure, with over 30 percent of librarians forecasting budget decreases of more than 5 percent in a recent EBSCO survey. While recent publisher price increases have trended in the mid single digits, any price increases at all in the current budget environment clearly present difficult purchasing decisions for librarians. To date, librarians have implemented a variety of tactics to bridge the growing budget gap: elimination of print and print-plus-online formats in favor of electronic-only content, cancelling e-package “Big Deals” that consume a large part of their content budgets, and reducing overall staffing and service levels. While these tactics have been effective in many cases, librarians are increasingly being forced to consider even more fundamental changes to their purchasing and operating strategies given the accelerating funding pressures. For example, with regard to collection development, librarians are now taking usage analysis more and more into account when making decisions on what to renew and what to cut. This type of analysis is becoming easier to undertake given the new usage products being developed by EBSCO and other companies in the information industry. With these tools, librarians will be able to understand very precisely what content is absolutely critical and what content may be expendable given the dire budget situation. Ultimately, librarians will use this knowledge to reduce the overall cost of content to match budget reductions while still maintaining the most impactful content for their patrons.

Of course, with this level of usage transparency, analysis, and scrutiny, content quality will be the key factor. This could put further pressure on the “Big Deal” e-package models. For instance, it seems likely that those publishers with the best content in each discipline will still be able to command pricing power for their top journals. However, it remains to be seen whether they will be able to bundle their second- and third-tier journals with their top-tier journals in order to preserve revenue. What does seem clear is that those publishers lacking top-quality content will most likely be in a difficult spot from a pricing and revenue growth perspective, and this may lead to further consolidation in the publishing industry.

Serials Price Projection Report 2012

About EBSCO
Established in 1944, EBSCO is the world’s leading information agent providing consultative services and cutting-edge technology for managing and accessing quality content, including print and e-journals, e-packages, research databases, eBooks and more. Now more than ever libraries and research organizations are looking for new ways to manage their collections more efficiently. EBSCO has developed the most comprehensive “e” discovery and management solutions, offering unparalleled integration to help librarians save time and money while empowering their users.

EBSCO serves clients in more than 200 countries through our 30 offices worldwide with more than 140 librarians on staff. To learn more about EBSCO’s products and services, visit www.ebsco.com.

For more information, please contact:
Rossi Morris
Media Relations Coordinator
EBSCO Corporate Communications
www.twitter.com/EBSCOInfoSvcs
rmorris@ebsco.com
205.980.3885