Louisiana Library Network Selects EBSCO Discovery Service™
~ EDS Chosen to Provide More Quality Information for LOUIS users and
Better Discoverability of LOUIS Resources ~

IPSWICH, Mass. — January 24, 2014 — LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network has chosen EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) from EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) to improve discoverability and help promote LOUIS resources to students and other departments. LOUIS is a partnership with academic libraries, state & private libraries, and museums & archives in the state of Louisiana and combines the collective resources of all members to produce a dynamic library consortium. EDS was chosen because of its ability to pull together LOUIS resources while also delivering a simplified search experience that provides quality results.

LOUIS members wanted a single search that is similar to a “Google” search for scholarly material. EDS takes LOUIS’s vast collection of electronic resources and brings it together in one place while also offering better discoverability. In a recent poll to library staff and faculty, one LOUIS member said, “Our users were missing a lot of good information from databases that they didn’t know about and EDS put them on track to find more quality information.”

Feedback from the library staff and faculty has been positive, specifically with regard to the robust features and functionality of EDS. Lisa Stigall, a network analyst with LOUIS, says, “Many of our members have been pleased with the EDS search experience. Popular features include the automatic citation feature, ability to limit searches to a specific discipline and the fact that the results screen is easy to use and manipulate.”

EBSCO support is in the process of working with LOUIS to customize EDS by modifying the colors, adding custom widgets and using a custom search box to search from the library’s home page. Further customizations will be implemented based on user feedback.

Looking to the future, LOUIS hopes that EDS will become a good tool for information literacy instruction and also hope to integrate EDS with another resource to create reading lists for students. They also believe the implementation of EDS will be a huge benefit to off-campus students. A LOUIS poll responder said, “Our off-campus students will have easy access to online resources from wherever they have Internet access. They can find what they need easily without the help of a reference librarian, when the library is closed.”

EBSCO Discovery Service brings together the most comprehensive collection of content—including superior indexing from top subject indexes, high-end full text and the entire library collection—all within an unparalleled full-featured, customizable discovery layer experience.

About EBSCO Information Services
EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) is the leading provider of resources for libraries including EBSCONET®, EBSCO’s total e-resource management system, and 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. EBSCO provides more than 375 research databases and more than 500,000 e-books plus subscription management services for more than 360,000 unique titles including more than 57,000 online titles. 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. For more information, visit the EBSCO Web site at: www.ebsco.com. EBSCO 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
Vice President of Communications
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebsco.com

EBSCO Information Services Highlights Resources to Help School and Public Libraries Align with State and Provincial Curriculum Standards
~ Schools and Public Libraries Will Find Value in Resources Designed to Help Support Curriculum—State Standards and Common Core Values ~

IPSWICH, Mass. — January 24, 2014 — As schools revisit state curriculum standards and more U.S. states adopt standards such as Common Core and as public libraries work to support their local school systems, EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) is pulling together information to better serve students, educators and librarians. EBSCO has created a curriculum standards webpage to provide easy access to information about the EBSCO databases that are aligned with state standards and Common Core values.

Common Core State Standards sets parameters for educators and parents to help make students college- and career-ready. Students are expected to “use technology and digital media strategically and capably.” Common Core also places importance on students’ ability to “employ technology thoughtfully to enhance their reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language use,” and stipulates that “they tailor their searches online to acquire useful information efficiently, and they integrate what they learn using technology with what they learn offline.”

EBSCO offers a number of databases that can help teachers and librarians prepare their students to meet state standards and Common Core values including English Language Learner Reference Center™, Literary Reference Center™ / Literary Reference Center Plus™, History Reference Center™, NoveList® Plus, Poetry & Short Story Reference Center™, Points of View Reference Center™, and Science Reference Center™. Database packages for elementary, middle, and high schools are also included. Reference Guides on the EBSCO Support Site demonstrate the ways in which educators can use EBSCO's dedicated interfaces to achieve the curriculum goals described in the Common Core State Standards.

Since EBSCO databases cover subject areas, the content includes thousands of informational texts to support the shift toward non-fiction reading and analysis in all classrooms including primary and secondary source documents. EBSCO databases include multimedia content, a text-to-speech tool, research guides, and citation help to support differentiated instruction, multiple intelligences and individual education plans (IEPs) as well as information literacy. Lesson plans, training guides and comprehension tests are also included to aid educators. Lexile® Reading Levels allow educators and students to identify texts appropriate to a student’s varying reading abilities and interests. Students and educators are also able to select content by page length to match student reading abilities.

Since the content in EBSCO databases is curated from a number of popular and academic sources, articles range in text type and level of text complexity to help students build on literacy success. EBSCO’s enhanced metadata, an intuitive interface and superior relevancy ranking combine to guide students toward the best results for their searches.

In addition to the content found in EBSCO databases, EBSCO also maintains a Curriculum Standards Module within each of these databases to help educators relate EBSCO content quickly and easily to Common Core, state- or Canadian province-specific curriculum standards. The module provides browsing of specific benchmarks, many of which have recommended search strings for successful content retrieval. Benchmarks can be easily saved as text files for integration with written lesson plans. Tutorials are also available including seven dedicated to the NoveList readers’ advisory service.

About EBSCO Information Services
EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) is the leading provider of resources for libraries including EBSCONET®, EBSCO’s total e-resource management system, and 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. EBSCO provides more than 375 research databases and nearly 500,000 e-books plus subscription management services for more than 360,000 unique titles including more than 57,000 online titles. 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. For more information, visit the EBSCO Web site at: www.ebsco.com. EBSCO 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
Vice President of Communications
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebsco.com

EBSCO Information Services Releases Communication Source™ – the Most Comprehensive Resource for Communication Research Available
~ New Communication Database Includes Unique Sources Never Previously Available ~

IPSWICH, Mass. — January 24, 2014 — EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) continues to expand coverage in the field of communication with the release of Communication Source™. Communication Source is the most comprehensive resource for communication research available today. The resource was developed from a merger of high-quality EBSCO databases, Communication and Mass Media Complete™ and Communication Abstracts ™ (formerly published by SAGE), and includes many unique sources never previously available.

Communication Source includes coverage of more than 1,000 core titles and features full text for more than 600 active periodicals, including 150 full-text titles not found in other EBSCO academic databases. The database offers abstracts and indexing as well as full-text content from publications worldwide pertaining to communication, linguistics, rhetoric and discourse, speech-language pathology, media studies and related fields. Back file coverage includes top titles in communication reaching deep into the 20th century.

Communication Source also features a subject-specific thesaurus with more than 4,500 preferred and 8,500 non-preferred terms, as well as searchable cited references to help researchers identify material relevant to their search results.

Communication Source is part of a growing collection of subject-specific resources offered by EBSCO including: Library & Information Science Source™, Art Source™, Education Source™, Applied Science & Technology Source™ and Humanities Source™.

About EBSCO Information Services
EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) is the leading provider of resources for libraries including EBSCONET®, EBSCO’s total e-resource management system, and 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. EBSCO provides more than 375 research databases and more than 500,000 e-books plus subscription management services for more than 360,000 unique titles including more than 57,000 online titles. 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. For more information, visit the EBSCO Web site at: www.ebsco.com. EBSCO 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
Vice President of Communications
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebsco.com

1/24/2014
CONTACT:
Nathan Curulla
(888) 900-8944
sales@bywatersolutions.com

Birmingham Museum of Art Chooses ByWater Solutions’ Koha Support

ByWater Solutions, an open source community contributor and America’s forefront provider of Koha support, announced today that the Birmingham Museum of Art, of Birmingham, Alabama, is now live on their installation of the Koha integrated library system.

ByWater Solutions completed the migration for the Birmingham Museum of Art last year and will be providing ongoing Koha support and hosting services to them. Their custom mobile-friendly OPAC can be viewed at http://bma.bywatersolutions.com

Tatum Preston, Librarian at Birmingham Museum of Art, spoke of her decision to move to Koha:

“I have long been a fan of both the flexibility and value offered by open source products like Koha. I chose to go with ByWater Solutions as my support and hosting provider due to their excellent customer service, automatic software upgrades, and competitively-priced hosting options.”

About Birmingham Museum of Art:

Founded in 1951, the Birmingham Museum of Art has one of the finest collections in the Southeast. More than 24,000 objects displayed and housed within the Museum represent a rich panorama of cultures, including Asian, European, American, African, Pre-Columbian, and Native American. Highlights include the Museum’s collection of Asian art, Vietnamese ceramics, the Kress collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts from the late 13th century to the 1750s, and the Museum’s world-renowned collection of Wedgwood, the largest outside of England. For more information about Birmingham Museum of Art, please visit: http://www.artsbma.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://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/

Atlanta, GA - January 23, 2014 - LYRASIS has developed an exclusive new eBook program, in partnership with ProQuest, to offer demand-driven eBook content to our members in an easy-to-manage, pay-as-you-go format. The program, entitled, Easy DDA, gives LYRASIS members access to thousands of books, with the ease of getting started and managing the collection, all while showing the value of actual monograph budget expenditure

With very little setup cost and minimal implementation time, LYRASIS members can begin to use Easy DDA to enhance their collections and improve their users' experience. Easy DDA is a great solution for libraries that have been reluctant to try eBooks and are skeptical of demand-driven acquisition (DDA). The Easy DDA program is straightforward and simple to administer, helps relieve space issues, and will prove popular with academic administrators. Members can also decide along the way, based on actual usage data, how much to expand access to the content and to which subject packages.

Easy DDA is easy to setup and manage, and provides a measurable return on investment. What makes Easy DDA so easy are the combined benefits of pre-set subject packages, pre-established DDA settings, space and cost savings, and the ease of managing eBook collections.

Pre-Set Subject Packages
The subject packages are built on the Library of Congress Classification (LCC) system. Each of the 18 subject packages can be parsed according to publication dates or used as a whole, based on need and budget. And, LYRASIS and ProQuest have eliminated very high priced books that can be budget busters.

Pre-Established DDA Settings
The default settings for purchase triggers, short-term rentals and other parameters are pre-set, yet adjustable per preferences or firsthand experiences with Easy DDA, supported by comprehensive real-time usage data. The settings are based on analysis of hundreds of DDA programs from around the world that EBL, the ProQuest company whose technology governs the program, has collected since 2005. LYRASIS and EBL staff will work with libraries to select collections and parameters that will come in within 5 percent of the specified budget.

Space and Cost Savings
Easy DDA is valuable for libraries that face space and monograph budget constraints. The analytic reports provide tangible data that demonstrate to library directors, provosts or university presidents the wise way in which libraries are using their monograph budgets.

eBook Benefits
Because eBooks are cost-effective in providing users access to current books on a continuous basis, the desired content is available to patrons anywhere, anytime. Every book in the Easy DDA program (more than 300,000 to start) allows multiple users at the same time. The books' full text is searchable, and notes can be taken, persist online for each user and are easily exported. And, the eBooks are downloadable to almost all devices.

"We are thrilled to be able to offer increased online access to eBook content that has never been easier, more efficient or more cost-effective," stated Kate Nevins, Executive Director of LYRASIS. "Easy DDA brings a wealth of content to our members and their users in a real-time, easy-to-use program that has not been available previously."

According to Kari Paulson, head of ProQuest's eBook division and a founder of EBL, "DDA is past the experimental stage, and eBooks should be a fact of life in academic libraries. DDA makes libraries better. By partnering with LYRASIS, we hope to bring value to libraries as they establish innovative ways to serve their patrons."

LYRASIS is debuting Easy DDA at ALA Midwinter in Philadelphia, PA, from January 24 through January 27, at booth #1261. For more information on Easy DDA, please visit www.lyrasis.org/easyDDA.

About LYRASIS
LYRASIS partners with member libraries and cultural heritage organizations to create, access and manage information with an emphasis on digital content, while building and sustaining collaboration, enhancing operations and technology, and increasing buying power. For more information, please visit www.lyrasis.org.

About ProQuest
ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company's products are a gateway to the world's knowledge including dissertations, governmental and cultural archives, news, historical collections and ebooks. ProQuest technologies serve users across the critical points in research, helping them discover, access, share, create and manage information. For more information, please visit www.proquest.com.