EBSCO Health Partners with McMaster University’s Health Information Research Unit to Expand Evidence-Based Healthcare
~ Will Bring More Evidence-Based Information to Healthcare Professionals ~

IPSWICH, Mass. — October 26, 2016 — Two organizations dedicated to evidence-based healthcare are joining forces to ensure that healthcare professionals can make decisions based on the best available evidence. The partnership between EBSCO Health and McMaster University’s Health Information Research Unit brings together two of the most established services that provide systematic literature surveillance to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare.

McMaster University is the birthplace of evidence-based healthcare. The Health Information Research Unit was created at McMaster to study and facilitate the transfer of high quality evidence from health care research to practitioners and publishers, via McMaster Premium Literature Service. McMaster PLUS™ uses its Critical Appraisal Process to identify studies and systematic reviews that are scientifically sound. Articles from the 120 top journals that meet McMaster’s scientific criteria are then rated by frontline clinicians for relevance and newsworthiness through the McMaster Online Rating of Evidence (MORE™) system.

By working with McMaster, EBSCO Health products will be uniquely empowered for continuously accessing systematically validated evidence for health care. This will complement EBSCO Health’s Evidence Validation Unit, which employs a systematic seven-step process to identify, critique, summarize and synthesize the best available evidence for clinical decision-making.

EBSCO’s synthesized evidence is presented in DynaMed Plus® in an easy-to-access format so healthcare professionals can use it at the point of care to make the best evidence-based clinical decisions as quickly as possible. The evidence surveillance also informs Nursing Reference Center™, Rehabilitation Reference Center™ and Patient Education Reference Center™ to provide the best current information to professionals and patients across the health care system.

McMaster and EBSCO Health will also team up to provide free updates of highly impactful evidence, organized and delivered with cutting edge technology. Currently, more than 200,000 subscribers receive recent and relevant studies that have been rated through the McMaster MORE system. With an overwhelming number of studies being published, this service allows healthcare professionals to have a resource that alerts them to the latest and best evidence in their particular field. Connecting this resource with EBSCO Health resources that provide context across healthcare will enhance the relevance and utility for these updates.

EBSCO Health Senior Vice President of Medical Product Management Betsy Jones says that this partnership will promote the use of systematically validated evidence. “McMaster is well-known throughout the world for its pioneering efforts to disseminate evidence-based information. This is closely aligned with EBSCO Health’s commitment to provide the global healthcare community with the information they need to make informed decisions. The integration between the McMaster and EBSCO Heath systems of literature surveillance will ensure that users of all EBSCO Health products have rapid access to the most valid evidence for clinical care.”

McMaster Industrial Liaison Office Chief, Gay Yuytung, provides the McMaster view on the agreement. “This joint venture with EBSCO provides McMaster’s Health Information Research Unit with a great opportunity to enhance generation and dissemination of health knowledge. McMaster and a world-class publisher like EBSCO can contribute very different but highly complementary components to their common goal of knowledge translation, aiming to improve the capabilities of clinicians for timely application of current best evidence for health care.”

About McMaster University’s Health Information Research Unit (HiRU)
HiRU was created in 1987 to study the problems in dissemination and uptake of validated health care knowledge, and to develop and test and deliver solutions to these problems. Beginning with more informative abstracts for journal articles in 1987, HiRU has created many innovations for knowledge transfer including ACP Journal Club (sponsored by the American College of Physicians), Evidence-Based Medicine (sponsored by the BMJ), and numerous internet-based “best evidence” services for clinicians, publishers, professional organizations, and others around the world.

About EBSCO Health
EBSCO Health, part of EBSCO Information Services, is a leading provider of clinical decision support solutions, healthcare business intelligence, and medical research information for the healthcare industry. EBSCO Health users include professionals in medicine, nursing, and allied health. Flagship products include CINAHL®, DynaMed Plus™, Nursing Reference Center™, clinical e-books and e-journals, EBSCO Discovery Service™, licensed databases (such as MEDLINE®), plus EBSCONET®. EBSCO databases are powered by EBSCOhost®, the electronic resource favored by libraries around the world.

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For more information, please contact:
Kathleen McEvoy
Vice President of Communications
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebsco.com

Massachusetts Library Group Receives Grant from EBSCO Information Services
~ Financial Grant will Support New Evergreen Developments ~

Worcester, Mass. — October 25, 2016 — The web-based, open source Integrated Library System (ILS)
Evergreen will be continuing to develop software that meets the needs of libraries thanks in part to a grant from EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO). The grant to the Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative (MassLNC) is intended to finance new developments of popular catalog features for thousands of libraries using Evergreen.

Evergreen is a highly scalable software for libraries that helps library patrons find library materials, and helps libraries manage, catalog and circulate those materials, no matter how large or complex the libraries. Started by the Georgia Public Library System in 2006, it has been adopted by a number of library consortia in North America as well as individual libraries around the world.

EBSCO’s contribution will assist Evergreen’s efforts to:
• Improve its ability to group together multiple formats and editions of a work
• Provide quick links that allow users to jump to alternate formats and editions from any record in the catalog
• Make other improvements to Evergreen search that group formats and edition, including improved record retrieval and a new setting to make it a library’s default search

MassLNC, a collaborative project of two library consortia: the North of Boston Library Exchange (NOBLE) and the Central/Western Massachusetts Automated Resource Sharing network (C/W MARS), works with Evergreen libraries and consortia to pool resources for Evergreen development. MassLNC will distribute the funds and oversee the development and integration conducted by Evergreen contributors: MOBIUS, a non-profit library consortium that supports the Missouri Evergreen consortium, and Equinox Software, an organization solely dedicated to the support and development of open source library technologies.

“We are very excited about this new partnership between MassLNC and EBSCO to bring important new functionality to the Evergreen catalog,” said MassLNC Coordinator Kathy Lussier. “The grant will help our efforts to provide a user-friendly and visually-appealing catalog that is easy for patrons to find material at their libraries.”

EBSCO Vice President of Global Software Services Ron Burns says that EBSCO’s support of Evergreen is part of the company’s commitment to open source for libraries. “Evergreen is a popular open source ILS that fulfills the core needs of many libraries, EBSCO has a strong history of supporting open source platforms that provide libraries with the systems that work for them, regardless of the library’s size or resources. This directly aligns with the Evergreen community’s efforts to enhance the management and discoverability of libraries’ diverse materials and formats.”

For more information on MassLNC, visit http://masslnc.org and to learn more about Evergreen, visit http://evergreen-ils.org.

About Evergreen
Evergreen is the leading Integrated Library System for consortia and delivers local flexibility and granularity of policies that no other software can match. Evergreen maintains robust performance on its open PostgreSQL database and delivers the most interoperability for libraries via its truly open APIs. The Evergreen community is made up of individuals, libraries, companies, and other organizations that support the software. Approximately 1,800 libraries around the world use Evergreen.
Evergreen is open-source software, licensed under the GNU GPL, version 2 or later. It is available to all for download from the Evergreen web site at http://evergreen-ils.org.

About Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative (MassLNC)
The Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative is a collaborative project between two Massachusetts library consortia - the Central/Western Massachusetts Automated Resource Sharing network (C/W MARS) and the North of Boston Library Exchange (NOBLE) - to work together to support and improve Evergreen. The project started with the support of a Library Services and Technology Act grant from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and is currently supported by the participating consortia and development partners.

The cooperative's goals are to provide a mutual support mechanism among full members, facilitate the pooling of resources for continued development of Evergreen, and to grow expertise to support and improve Evergreen. MassLNC also coordinates the MassLNC Evergreen Development Initiative, an opportunity for libraries and consortia running Evergreen to maximize their resources by pooling funds to sponsor exciting new features and important improvements for the open-source system. More information about MassLNC can be found at http://masslnc.org.

About EBSCO Information Services
EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) is the leading discovery service provider for libraries worldwide with more than 11,000 discovery customers in over 100 countries. EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) provides each institution with a comprehensive, single search box for its entire collection, offering unparalleled relevance ranking quality and extensive customization. EBSCO is also the preeminent provider of online research content for libraries, including hundreds of research databases, historical archives, point-of-care medical reference, and corporate learning tools serving millions of end users at tens of thousands of institutions. EBSCO is the leading provider of electronic journals & books for libraries, with subscription management for more than 360,000 serials, including more than 57,000 e-journals, as well as online access to more than 900,000 e-books. For more information, visit the EBSCO website at: www.ebsco.com. EBSCO Information Services is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., a family owned company since 1944.
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For more information, please contact:
Kathy Lussier
MassLNC Coordinator
(508) 343-0128
klussier@masslnc.org