~ Content Coverage and Subject Indexes Key Factors in Decision ~

IPSWICH, Mass. — February 2, 2011 —Bielefeld University has chosen EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) from EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) citing superior content coverage as one of the main factors in its decision. Bielefeld selected EDS after an intense and detailed review of the service, determining that EBSCO Discovery Service provided the best content coverage plus the option to integrate high quality subject indexes.

University Library Bielefeld is one of the most prestigious libraries worldwide with a strong focus on the quality and development of services provided to its users. The university had been looking to replace its Journal Articles Database, known and used Germany-wide under the name of JADE, which the library created and developed in the mid 1990s.

Mr. Dirk Pieper, Media Department Head, says the university library was very pleased with the content in EBSCO Discovery Service and it was one of the major factors when choosing EDS as its discovery solution. “Our decision to choose EDS was primarily due to the superior content coverage provided in the Base Index. EDS convinced us with its high quality A&I data and will replace our own journal articles database, JADE, which can be seen as a first kind of discovery development started by our library itself in the mid 90s.”

Libraries subscribing to subject indexes on EBSCOhost can leverage EBSCO's "platform blending" technology to infuse results from these high-end indexes into the EDS result list, heightening the overall value and experience for end users. For Pieper this unique attribute of EDS was a major factor in the decision to implement EDS. “We were very pleased with the integration of EBSCO database subject indexes and the option to blend in high quality subject indexes. In addition EBSCO’s web services help us to accomplish integrating the strong EDS index into our own library catalog using a very comfortable interface (API).”

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 64,000 magazines & journals, approximately 825,000 CDs & DVDs, nearly six million books, more than 320 million newspaper articles, more than 400,000 conference proceedings and hundreds of thousands of additional information sources from various source-types.

About University Library Bielefeld
University Library Bielefeld stands in the library community worldwide for innovative, user-friendly information services that were developed and tested in Bielefeld and later adopted by library unions and single libraries joining their user groups. University Library Bielefeld was the first library to run an OPAC in Germany in 1979. University Library of Bielefeld is the host and organizer of the Bielefeld Conference, a bi-annual conference, set up 1992 to especially create a discussion forum focused on library innovation (10th International Bielefeld Conference: 24 - 26 April 2012), and is known for technological innovation in search engines and communication systems, of which the open access platform BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine) is only one example.

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.

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