FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. – February 6, 2018

WHAT: Gale, a Cengage company, is demonstrating its upcoming new Digital Scholar Lab, a cloud-based research environment that allows students and scholars to apply natural language processing tools to raw text data (OCR) from Gale's primary source collections in a single research platform. ALA Midwinter attendees will get a sneak preview of this new innovative research tool that removes key barriers of entry into digital scholarship, enabling users at any level to quickly perform textual analysis on large corpora of historical texts. This accelerates workflows allowing scholars and students to focus on their core research objectives.

WHY: As academic libraries continually shift to keep up with the changing needs of research and scholarship, many are looking at the digital humanities as an opportunity for closer collaboration with faculty and other campus stakeholders.

With the Digital Scholar Lab, Gale has created a research environment that helps bridge the gap that often exists between the primary sources available through the library and the research workflow of faculty and students. By simplifying and combining access to unique content and natural language processing tools, the Digital Scholar Lab helps position the library at the center of digital scholarship across campus.

WHEN: February 9-12, 2018

WHERE: ALA Midwinter Conference, Booth #1508, Colorado Convention Center, Denver, CO

NOTE TO REPORTERS: If you would like to schedule a one-on-one meeting with Gale at ALA Midwinter, please reach out to: Kayla Siefker, 248-915-9624, kayla.siefker@cengage.com.

About Cengage and Gale
Cengage is the education and technology company built for learners. The company serves the higher education, K-12, professional, library and workforce training markets worldwide. Gale, a Cengage company, provides libraries with original and curated content, as well as the modern research tools and technology that are crucial in connecting libraries to learning, and learners to libraries. For more than 60 years, Gale has partnered with libraries around the world to empower the discovery of knowledge and insights – where, when, and how people need it. Gale has 500 employees globally with its main operations in Farmington Hills, Michigan. For more information, please visit www.gale.com.

Follow Gale on:
• Twitter - @galecengage
• Gale Blog - http://blog.gale.com/
• Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/GaleCengage/

~ Agreement with Open Source Service Provider Designed to Offer Libraries Choice and Support for FOLIO Systems ~

IPSWICH, Mass. — February 1, 2018 — EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) and ByWater Solutions have expanded their relationship to ensure libraries adopting the FOLIO Library Services Platform (LSP) will be able to rely on hosting and services support.

The agreement secures ByWater’s commitment to provide FOLIO implementation and support services backed by EBSCO hosting technology and data services. ByWater Solutions has been recognized for its customer satisfaction in supporting library systems and is currently the largest service provider for the Koha Open Source Library System supporting more than 1,000 Koha libraries.

ByWater Solutions co-owner and Chief Executive Officer Brendan Gallagher says the ByWater team will work with EBSCO to provide support for its libraries using FOLIO as their library services platform or looking to add FOLIO microservices or apps to their current systems. “Open source services allow libraries to save money on the technology and focus on service and customer support. By extending our expertise, and leveraging EBSCO’s services, we expect to help libraries implement FOLIO and migrate libraries to the FOLIO LSP and provide ongoing support.”

EBSCO, which has supported FOLIO with funding, developers and project management as well as provided funding for Koha, will provide FOLIO hosting services and advanced software support as well as a compliment of data integration services. EBSCO Vice President of Services Product Management Ron Burns says these agreements give EBSCO the opportunity to create a high level of customer service standards. “As we move to the next phase, where beta sites are actively testing FOLIO, we want to ensure that service providers such as EBSCO and ByWater come together to create technical support structures, migration plans and implementation goals. As FOLIO becomes a reality, service providers are going to create the foundation needed to allow the adoption of open source systems and the expansion of FOLIO into multiple types and sizes of libraries.”

ByWater and EBSCO will be working together and with the FOLIO community to support the first libraries going live with FOLIO in 2019.

Since being announced in June 2016, FOLIO has formed a community and librarians and developers have joined special interest groups that are actively creating an open source LSP that supports traditional resource management functionality that can be extended into emerging areas. FOLIO is being designed to be flexible to allow librarians to select the applications that best align with their workflow needs. The applications are modular and allow multiple vendors or libraries to contribute applications. Extensibility is an essential element allowing FOLIO to integrate with internal and external systems including university enterprise systems, institutional repositories, research management and discovery services. Development supports Linked Open Data to allow libraries to expand their reach and FOLIO provides scalability through multi-tenancy. The service will support all formats natively and is based on a central knowledgebase. More information is available at www.folio.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 1,000,000 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.

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

About ByWater Solutions
ByWater Solutions is a full service, high quality open source 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 for Koha or Folio support 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/.

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For more information, please contact:
Nathan Curulla
Owner/CRO, ByWater Solutions
(888) 900-8944 ext. 2
nate@bywatersolutions.com

ByWater Solutions at Louisiana Library Association 2018

ByWater Solutions will be at the Louisiana Library Association (LLA) Annual Conference from March 7-9, 2018. The Conference will be held in Alexandria, Louisiana at the Holiday Inn Downtown Alexandria Convention Center. We would love to see you, catch up and share some time together. Please email Adam Brooks at adam@bywatersolutions.com to set up a time to meet.

About ByWater Solutions

ByWater Solutions is a full service, high quality Koha 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 for Koha support 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.

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, HTML5, 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/