Library Skates its Way to Victory with Unique Campaign

Farmington Hills, Mich., Nov. 13, 2012 — Gale, part of Cengage Learning and a leading publisher of research and reference resources for libraries, schools and businesses, today announced that Auraria Library in Denver, Colorado is the winner of the Out-of-the-Box Marketing Contest, launched in September at R-Squared – The Risk and Reward Conference. Auraria Library will receive $5,000 from Gale to make its marketing idea a reality.

“At Cengage Learning we took a risk by supporting a radically different type of conference and our reward has been seeing all of these amazing ideas developed,” said Nader Qaimari, senior vice president of marketing, Cengage Learning. “We were impressed with all of the submissions, but we felt that Auraria Library’s campaign really connected with its core audience in a unique way.”

In line with the immersive spirit of the R-Squared Conference, where librarians learned how to reinvent themselves and strengthen their role as vital parts of their communities, Gale asked conference attendees to develop out-of-the-box marketing ideas for their library. Submissions were evaluated on their originality, whether they were exciting, different and risky, as well as the actionability of the idea. Auraria Library’s campaign “Books and Boards” was selected as the winner.

Auraria Library, a tri-institutional library serving three separate institutions of higher education in downtown Denver, wanted to create a campaign that would resonate with their active urban students. The “Books and Boards” campaign does that by leveraging Colorado’s action sports culture, specifically skateboarding - it’s one of the top three states for skateboard parks per capita and the sport has exploded on the Auraria campus. Using the money from Gale, the library will purchase 200-300 professionally-built skateboards. The skateboard graphic will be determined through a graphic design contest, which will create a buzz about the project well before the boards arrive on campus. The boards will be given away to high school students, incoming freshman and at other campus events.

“We are so excited that Gale has recognized our innovative campaign – to use skateboarding as an opportunity to rebrand and reconnect with our active students,” said Joseph Sanchez, instructional designer who wrote, directed and skateboarded in “Books and Boards.” “We wanted to promote a radically different image of the library and with this contest money we’re going to be able to do that.”

Five finalists were also recognized for their unique and risky campaigns including:

• Cedar Rapids Public Library – “Brain Drain” – Leveraging the popularity of a local famers’ market, the library proposed covering storm drains in the area with images of children swirling down drains promoting the slogan “Avoid Brain Drain – Visit the Library” with a URL for a special landing page.
• Texas A&M University Libraries – “Come Ride With Us” – They proposed buying a “super” golf cart to not only connect the six libraries on their campus, but to use it as a tool to engage with students on many levels – delivering books to them, driving them to class, participating in “Aggie” sporting events, riding in parades and generally getting to their students wherever they are.
• Library of Virginia – “Marketing to a Captive Audience” – To pique the curiosity of people unaware of the library, they proposed placing custom printed toilet paper in public restrooms of nearby colleges, museums, hotels and restaurants. The paper would include quotes from the “Wrong Side of History,” teasers about upcoming library programs, QR codes to the LVA Mobile App and other digital resources.
• Boyd County Public Library – “Seeking Lost Love” – By sending out parodies of personal ads the library hoped to target an audience of younger singles who often don’t use the library at this life stage. Tactics included creating magnetic decals that say "For a Good Time Call" with the library’s logo and phone number and place them in bathrooms of local bars, clubs and restaurants; placing personal ads in the classifieds for "Library seeking New Readers;” and creating Match.com accounts to match readers’ interests with compatible books.
• Springfield-Greene County Library District – “We Speak Your Language” – In an effort to make patrons more comfortable using the library, they proposed moving away from the Dewey Decimal system to a new classification in which the library would have “thematic” neighborhoods. Using temporary graffiti to “tag” their local neighborhoods with codes that coordinated with the old Dewey system, they hoped to foster discussion among community members and encourage them to “break the code.”

For more information on the winning campaign or any of the finalists, visit the contest website here or 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.cengage.com.

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Charleston, SC – November 13, 2012 – BiblioBoard has been named the “Best New Mobile App” by the 12th Annual Charleston Advisor Reader’s Choice Awards. The Charleston Advisor, a journal that publishes critical reviews of online resources for libraries, sponsors an annual series of awards for the best and worst electronic products of interest to libraries.

Created by BiblioLabs, BiblioBoard is a free iPad® app that gives users access to historical anthologies that explore places, events, people and themes from across the centuries. Within BiblioBoard, there are a variety of anthologies available for purchase for $9.99 or less which generally include 75+ pieces of unique content such as books, images, videos, audio files, articles and other historical documents, all available for the price of a single paperback.

BiblioLabs partners with cultural institutions from around the world, including the British Library and the Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia, to make their content universally accessible on BiblioBoard. BiblioLabs has also created a free, user-friendly authoring platform (BiblioBoard Creator) that allows libraries, museums and subject-matter experts to create multimedia anthologies from their own content or from accessing a wealth of licensed, open source and public domain materials available within BiblioLabs’ core database.

In early 2013, BiblioLabs will launch BiblioBoard Institutional, a library version of BiblioBoard. Libraries across the world will be able to offer BiblioBoard as an IP authenticated product directly to their library patrons, instead of patrons personally purchasing each individual anthology. Patrons will be able to access the anthologies in BiblioBoard from the Web or any mobile device.

“We are honored that the library community has selected BiblioBoard as the Best New Mobile App,” said Mitchell Davis, Chief Business Officer of BiblioLabs. “Being recognized for creating a digital ecosystem that allows libraries to make their content available to world on the iPad and the Web, reaffirms to us that there is a need to help these great institutions share their wealth of knowledge, all while providing them with a new revenue stream.”

Download BiblioBoard for free in the App Store℠ (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/biblioboard/id497998887?mt=8) or register to try the BiblioBoard Web version in beta at www.BiblioBoard.com.

About BiblioLabs, LLC
BiblioBoard was created by BiblioLabs, LLC a hybrid software-media company that created a multimedia authoring tool which enables curators and subject matter experts to discover, enhance and create new works from the wealth of licensed, open source and public domain materials available within their core database. BiblioLabs works with leading organizations around the world to create widespread commercial access to rare and interesting materials in an innovative way. To learn more about BiblioBoard, visit www.BiblioBoard.com.

Media Contacts
Kelly Hamilton
Director of Marketing and Communication
kelly@bibliolabs.com

~Largest University in Europe - University La Sapienza - Plans to Consolidate Its Electronic Resources, OPAC and Digital Library with EBSCO Discovery Service™~

IPSWICH, Mass. — November 13, 2012 — The Universita La Sapienza in Italy has chosen EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) from EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO). Universita La Sapienza is one of the largest universities in Europe. EDS will play a major role in consolidating the library’s many resources while providing comprehensive and relevant results.

After evaluating other discovery services, Universita La Sapienza concluded that EDS’s deep and powerful search better suited its users. Acquisition Manager for Bibliographic Electronic Resources, Ezio Tarantino, says, “EDS is well structured and the sort criteria are very effective. Together they provide a comprehensive result list that will give our users and easy and powerful way to find what they need.”

EDS combines an institution’s entire collection with its extensive Base Index that yields a comprehensive return of content. The strong relevancy-ranking system from EDS ensures that users not only find relevant result lists but also the best results on the first page.

In order to help support many of its off-campus students, the University will utilize the personal account functionalities in EDS such as authenticating through email address credentials. Students will be able to utilize other intuitive features including search history strings, save/share searches, personalized and shared folders, RSS feeds and email alerts.

Universita La Sapienza plans to add its institutional repository including Ph.D. theses and will take advantage of customization features including utilizing graphic options to adhere to the University’s website and custom naming the discovery tool.

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.

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.

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 more than 325,000 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.
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For more information, please contact:
Kathleen McEvoy
Public Relations Director
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebscohost.com

11/12/2012
CONTACT:
Nathan Curulla
(888) 900-8944
sales@bywatersolutions.com

Santa Fe Indian School Goes Live on Koha with ByWater Solutions

ByWater Solutions, an open source community supporter and the U.S.’ forefront provider of Koha (www.koha-community.org) support, announced today that the Santa Fe Indian School's Library Media Center in Santa Fe, NM. is now live on their installation of the Koha integrated library system.

ByWater Solutions completed the migration for SFIS in October and will be providing ongoing support services for them.

The Library Media Center  collection contains approximately 22,000 items, including books, periodicals, maps, archival materials, posters, CDs, DVDs, and videotapes, housed in a beautiful two-level gallery setting. Along with books, a dozen online databases, access to the Internet, and other reference resources are available. Equipment that circulates includes TV/VCR/DVD units, LCD projectors, document cameras, digital cameras, e-Readers, mobile digital devices, camcorders, and light or sound systems.

Brendan Gallagher, CEO of ByWater stated:

“ByWater Solutions is thrilled to have the chance to partner with Santa Fe Indian School for the support of their Koha system. The students and staff of the Santa Fe Indian School will greatly benefit from all of the new features in Koha and we look forward to a long and productive relationship.”

The Santa Fe Indian School Library Media Center’s customized online catalog can be viewed here: http://lib.sfis.k12.nm.us/

About the Santa Fe Indian School:
The purpose of the Santa Fe Indian School is to provide a challenging and stimulating academic program of excellence which shares the responsibility with students and their parents in developing the students’ potential to meet obligations to themselves and their communities. For more information please visit: http://www.sfis.k12.nm.us/

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://koha-community.org/

About ByWater Solutions:
ByWater Solutions is a full service, high quality support and implementation company dedicated to providing libraries with a lower cost, more advanced level of support for their ILS than a traditional proprietary solution can offer. ByWater Solutions has a proven track record in first rate Koha implementation and support with library systems of all sizes. Our highly ranked, comprehensive support is what sets our company apart from any other vendor in the industry. Partnering with ByWater Solutions to support Koha not only lowers the cost of implementing and maintaining an ILS, but more importantly empowers libraries by giving them the flexibility and freedom they deserve. For more information please visit: http://bywatersolutions.com/

Sixteen more libraries have announced that they have selected OCLC WorldShare Management Services, the first cooperative, Webscale library management services that streamline cataloging, acquisitions, circulation, license management and workflows with a powerful discovery and delivery tool for library users.

OCLC WorldShare Management Services enable libraries to share infrastructure costs and resources, as well as collaborate in ways that free them from the restrictions of local hardware and software. Libraries using WorldShare Management Services find that they are able to reduce the time needed for traditional tasks and free staff time for higher-priority services.

“We selected WorldShare Management Services because we really wanted to get away from managing servers and back-office infrastructure and focus more of our time on working with student- and faculty-specific projects,” said Stanley J. Wilder, University Librarian, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, one of the newest members of the WorldShare Management Services community. “Plus, we wanted the ability to manage all of our various library services under one platform—using true multi-tenancy architecture that also would allow UNCC to benefit from cloud-based collaboration among our library peers.”

UNC Charlotte is North Carolina’s urban research university. It is the fourth largest campus among the 17 institutions of The University of North Carolina system and the largest institution of higher education in the Charlotte region.

Among the new subscribers to OCLC WorldShare Management Services:

• College of the Siskiyous (Weed, California)
• De Anza College (Cupertino, California)
• Glendale Community College (Glendale, California)
• Indiana Institute of Technology (Fort Wayne, Indiana)
• Iona College (New Rochelle, New York)
• Lake Tahoe Community College (South Lake Tahoe, California)
• Mt. San Antonio College (Walnut, California)
• Nashotah House (Nashotah, Wisconsin)
• North Central University (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
• Northwestern Oklahoma State University (Alva, Oklahoma)
• Saint Leo University (St. Leo, Florida)
• San Bernardino Valley College (San Bernardino, California)
• The Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, California)
• Tyndale University College & Seminary (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)
• The University of North Carolina at Charlotte
• Westminster College (New Wilmington, Pennsylvania)

OCLC WorldShare Management Services were released for general availability in the United States 16 months ago. Today, a total of 148 libraries have signed agreements to use the new services and 52 sites are already live.

More about OCLC WorldShare Management Services can be found on the OCLC website at http://www.oclc.org/webscale/default.htm.