~ New Collaboration to Dramatically Enhance Article Discovery for Mutual Customers ~

IPSWICH, Mass. — June 22, 2012 — In a continuing effort to improve accessibility and usability for customers, EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) and Innovative Interfaces, Inc. (Innovative) have expanded their collaborative agreement. The companies have agreed to joint development that will enable more tightly integrated access between EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) and Innovative’s Encore discovery platform in addition to facilitating access between EDS and Innovative’s Millennium ILS and Sierra Services Platform. Having access to EDS’s unified index will expand the quality and amount of content available for Encore users while adding the enhanced features and functionality available from EDS. Encore users will also be able to search their EBSCOhost databases via the Encore interface—providing a uniquely powerful article search experience.

Executive Vice President of Technology and Chief Information Officer for EBSCO Publishing, Michael Gorrell, says the agreement will help customers rooted in an Encore discovery experience who want the rich metadata and features that EBSCO Discovery Service provides. “As we continue to explore what ‘discovery’ means to our customers, we realize that there are as many different scenarios as there are institutions. Partnering with Innovative Interfaces allows both companies to provide expanded services to customers and helps each library better define its own discovery experience.”

John McCullough, Vice President of Product Management, Innovative Interfaces agrees. “Libraries will benefit from the integration of these two technology platforms. EDS is the premier article pre-index in the industry and Encore offers some of the finest discovery functionality on the market. Combining these two technologies will produce a unified and integrated result set that combines the best of both worlds.”

The collaboration between the two companies has progressed as customer needs have evolved. Gorrell continued, “As we continue to develop EDS and its interface, we also want to provide a rich discovery experience for library users who begin their research on a partner platform such as Encore. Working closely with the Innovative engineering team, we’ve been able to create an elegant solution that allows the users on the Encore platform to have access to the EDS search engine, leveraging the strong metadata, the highly-refined relevancy ranking system and the features and functionality that have come to define EBSCO Discovery Service.” EDS has quickly become the discovery service for hundreds of universities around the world. EDS provides a full-featured experience for end users bringing together a comprehensive index and a single search approach while also offering a true academic and powerful environment in order to facilitate a comprehensive discovery experience.

###
About Innovative Interfaces
Innovative creates cutting-edge products that allow libraries to succeed in a modern technology environment and the freedom to implement solutions that best meet their specific needs. The company’s versatile and market-leading solutions include: the Sierra Services Platform, the Millennium ILS, the Encore discovery platform, Electronic Resource Management, and INN-Reach resource sharing. An established company with a vision for the future, Innovative connects with thousands of libraries of all types in over 50 countries. Innovative’s commitment to service is reflected by its 24/7/365 Help Desk, Innovative University, and the CSDirect Web support center. The company is located in Emeryville, California with offices around the world.

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 e-books. The company provides more than 350 databases and nearly 300,000 e-books. 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
EBSCO Publishing
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebscohost.com

Gene Shimshock
VP Marketing
Innovative Interfaces
(510) 655-6200
genes@iii.com