ByWater Solutions, America’s forefront provider of Open Source library technology support, announced today that they are providing support and hosting services for the Aspen Discovery Open Source system for Arlington Public Library in Virginia. Arlington Public Library has a service population of over 212,000 individuals, a collection of 500,000 plus resources, and an annual circulation of 3 million transactions a year.

You can view Arlington's Aspen Discovery interface by visiting: https://libcat.arlingtonva.us/

Here is a recent quote from Mark Noble, Developer for Aspen Discovery:

It's been truly inspiring to work with such a dedicated team to make Aspen Discovery even more accessible for our public users. The improvements made to Aspen for this migration represents a monumental push into the development of Aspen as an Open Source product.

About Arlington Public Library
Arlington Public Library is the heart of a thoughtful, inclusive and dynamic community where people and ideas connect.

Read more at https://library.arlingtonva.us/about-us/

Here is a recent quote from the Arlington Library Web Team:

We are extremely excited to significantly expand the functionality of our discovery services with Aspen. Some of the new features like uploading custom covers to any record, separating physical from eContent materials when looking at checkouts and holds and improved OverDrive integration were completed before go-live, has us thrilled to be partnering with ByWater Solutions for this project.

About Aspen Discovery
Aspen is a full-featured Discovery System that integrates with e-content and other 3rd party providers, giving your patrons comprehensive access to all of your materials in one place. Aspen combines your library catalog with e-content, digital archives, and enrichment from all major third-party providers, improves relevancy and ease of use, provides native reading recommendations, displays all formats of titles within one result (FRBR) and much more. Aspen was created to give users an improved experience over other Discovery systems with less of an impact on library budgets. For more information about Aspen please visit: https://bywatersolutions.com/projects/aspen-discovery

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 systems than a traditional proprietary solution can offer. ByWater Solutions has a proven track record in first-rate implementation and support services with library systems of all sizes for the Koha ILS, Aspen Discovery, Folio LSP, Coral ERM, and Libki PC Management.

Our highly ranked, comprehensive support is what sets our company apart from any other vendor in the industry. Partnering with ByWater Solutions not only lowers the cost of implementation and maintenance of OSS but more importantly empowers libraries by giving them the flexibility and freedom they deserve. For more information please visit https://bywatersolutions.com.

For More Information
Jessica Zairo
Marketing & Outreach Coordinator
ByWater Solutions
bywatersolutions.com
Phone:(888)900-8944

ByWater Solutions, America’s forefront provider of Open Source library technology support, announced today that the Hollis Social Library, Hollis, New Hampshire is now live on Koha! ByWater completed the transition of the libraries' 39,000 plus holdings from TLC Library. Solution ILS and is providing ongoing support services to the library.

The libraries' customized Koha OPAC's can be viewed at https://hollisnh.bywatersolutions.com/.

About Hollis Social Library
The Mission of the Hollis Social Library is to connect patrons with informational, cultural, and recreational resources to enrich life, promote literacy, inspire intellectual curiosity, support lifelong learning, and stimulate the imagination.

Read more at https://www.hollislibrary.org/

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 systems than a traditional proprietary solution can offer. ByWater Solutions has a proven track record in first-rate implementation and support services with library systems of all sizes for the Koha ILS, Aspen Discovery, Folio LSP, Coral ERM, and Libki PC Management.

Our highly ranked, comprehensive support is what sets our company apart from any other vendor in the industry. Partnering with ByWater Solutions not only lowers the cost of implementation and maintenance of OSS but more importantly empowers libraries by giving them the flexibility and freedom they deserve. For more information please visit https://bywatersolutions.com.

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.

For More Information
Jessica Zairo
Marketing & Outreach Coordinator
ByWater Solutions
bywatersolutions.com
Phone:(888)900-8944

Primary Source Collection Explores the Untold Stories of Southern African and Australian LGBTQ History and Culture

FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. – March 17, 2020 – In collaboration with the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives, Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action (GALA) and the Lesbian Herstory Archives, Gale, a Cengage company, has released the fourth installment of its award-winning Archives of Sexuality and Gender series. Archives of Sexuality and Gender: International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture, a part of Gale Primary Sources, explores the untold stories of LGBTQ history and culture, with a focus on southern Africa and Australia throughout the 20th century (1820-2016). This never-before-digitized collection expands upon the first three archives, providing researchers and scholars access to thousands of rare and unique resources that offer historical perspectives into the populations and regions of the world that have been underrepresented in the study of sexuality and gender. Read Gale’s blog about the new archive: http://bit.ly/3b0dULn.

Archives of Sexuality and Gender: International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture presents cultural and social histories, struggles for rights and freedoms, explorations of sexuality and organizations and prominent figures in LGBTQ history in southern Africa and Australia. Additionally, it presents documentation of grassroots activism, the papers of lesbian and feminist organizations, and lesbian culture internationally. Researchers and scholars will gain key insights into the oppression, struggles and triumphs of southern African and Australian LGBTQ individuals and groups as well as international lesbian activism and herstory.

View a video on the value and uniqueness of the new archive: http://bit.ly/3d37U6F.

“Gale is committed to publishing collections that support the study and inclusion of diverse and minority voices,” said Seth Cayley, vice president of Gale Primary Sources. “Offering new perspectives on sexuality and gender studies while making certain LGBTQ history is not erased from the historical record supports initiatives to decolonize the curriculum and are key goals of the Archives of Sexuality & Gender series. Gale is proud to partner with organizations dedicated to preserving cultural memory.”

Archives of Sexuality and Gender: International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture features three unique collections that highlight the struggle for equality, document social activism and detail the development of LGBTQ culture and society:

• Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action (GALA): a center for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and questioning (LGBTIQ) culture and education in southern Africa. It was founded to address the erasure of LGBTQ experiences from official archives, histories and other spaces in South Africa. Collections feature:

• Papers of Simon Tseko Nkoli: a prominent anti-apartheid, gay and lesbian rights, and HIV/AIDS activist.

• Papers of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG): a nonprofit LGBTIQ advocacy organization offering counseling and health services and raising awareness against persecution.

• Exit Newspaper: South Africa’s longest-running monthly LGBTIQ publication.

• Papers of LEGATRA: The Lesbians, Gays and Transgender Persons Association (LEGATRA) was established in 1997 as an alliance for the defense of lesbians, gays and transgender persons’ basic human rights in Zambia. Due to institutional harassment, LEGATRA was short lived, with most members fleeing Zambia’s borders.

• Papers of Joy Wellbeloved: prominent transgender activist involved with the Phoenix Society, an organization for white men who dressed in women’s clothing.

• Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives (ALGA): Australia’s only community group that collects, preserves and makes LGBTIQ material from across the country readily accessible. The ALGA periodicals collection represents the history of the early gay liberation movement in Australia from the 1970s to the 2010s. The ALGA and Gale have partnered to digitize more than 150 titles from the collection, with particular strengths in 1970s to 1980s activism, cultural and social history, community newsletters, support groups, the arts and entertainment and the AIDS crisis.

All six Australian states are represented in the collection, offering LGBTIQ history across the continent. Titles include:

• National level: OutRage and Gayzette.

• State level: CAMP NSW Newsletter and Speaking Volumes (Adelaide).

• Metropolitan centers: Capital Q (Sydney) and Now in Melbourne.

• Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA): gathers and preserves records of lesbian lives and activities. The collection includes nearly 130,000 pages of manuscripts and ephemera from two collections:

• Organization Files: content from more than 1,600 groups that focus on lesbian issues and women’s/feminist groups with a lesbian focus or participation.

• Geographic Files: local “lesbian/gay maps,” event flyers, bar listings, newspaper clippings and local newsletters gathered from around the world, covering Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

The Archives of Sexuality and Gender series is available on the Gale Primary Sources platform, enabling cross-archival searching to help users make new connections across topics. For those looking to explore even deeper insights, the series is also available through the Gale Digital Scholar Lab. This allows researchers to apply natural language processing tools to raw text data (OCR) from the collections or Gale Primary Sources archives and perform textual analysis on large corpora of historical texts. Now researchers can analyze and explore historical text more interactively, generating new research insights and content sets not previously possible.

This fourth installment offers:

• access to more than 450,000 pages of rare content, making it the largest and most comprehensive resource of its kind for the study of sexuality and gender in southern Africa and Australia.

• untold stories of LGBTQ history and culture in southern Africa and Australia, regions generally underrepresented in the study of sexuality and gender.

• coverage of organizations involved in lesbian rights in the 20th century, as well as lesbian ephemera from each of the states in the U.S. and countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

• cross-searching and textual analysis with Gale’s Digital Scholar Lab and Gale Primary Sources, opening new research opportunities.

The Archives of Sexuality and Gender program is complementary to Gale’s Dartmouth Medal winning, Global Encyclopedia of LGBTQ History and helps support the study of sex and sexuality, LGBTQ history, and gender studies.

To request a trial, visit the Archives of Sexuality and Gender: International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture webpage: http://bit.ly/3d127hM.

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/

EBSCO eBooks™ Named Top E-Book Platform Provider in 2020 ASPIRE Accessibility Audit
~ EBSCO eBooks™ Receives First-Ever Maximum Score for a Platform or Publisher ~

IPSWICH, Mass. — March 12, 2020 — For the second time, EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) has been ranked the number one e-book platform provider out of 46 e-book platforms assessed in the 2020 ASPIREverified Accessibility Audit with the first-ever perfect score of 100 percent. This honor recognizes an organization’s commitment to improving the content and communication of its accessibility statements in order to provide full transparency to customers and end-users.

ASPIREverified is the first verification service for accessibility statements in the publishing industry. This service helps create a transparent environment for content by reviewing, scoring, and verifying the accessibility statements of top publishers and vendors. Their efforts aim to promote accessibility by encouraging publishers and platform providers to supply clear communications to customers and to continue to improve transparency surrounding their products. In the 2019 ASPIREverified audit, EBSCO received a Gold score of 85 percent. EBSCO has proven its dedication to improving the user experience by not only increasing its score by 15 percentage points, but also by becoming the first platform or publisher to achieve a maximum.

EBSCO Information Services Director of Product Management for EBSCO eBooks™ Kara Kroes Li says this ranking reflects EBSCO’s continued commitment to improving the user experience of EBSCO products. “Being the first platform provider to receive a perfect score on the ASPIRElist shows our dedication to accessibility and to the inclusion of all users, regardless of ability. The ASPIRE project helped us understand the importance of clear and comprehensive accessibility documentation, which saves students’ time and improves their experience with our products. Inclusion in this audit also provides us insights that we can use to further improve the accessibility of EBSCO eBooks. We are grateful to our partners at ASPIRE for moving the industry forward through this valuable project.”

In addition to participating in the ASPIRE audit, EBSCO recently unveiled a series of enhancements, new capabilities and interface designs that will be delivered over the coming year and beyond that will improve the user experience. The roadmap highlights the efforts EBSCO is making to ensure products are not only usable but also accessible to every user, keeping their unique needs in mind. With the help of EBSCO’s partners, W3C and The Carroll Center for Blind, EBSCO has been able to conduct user research and perform on-site testing that ensures the advancement toward WCAG 2.1AA compliance.

EBSCO Information Services Senior Vice President of User Experience and Product Management Tim Lull says as EBSCO is working toward platform enhancements that have accessibility at their core, this designation is a sign that the company is moving in the right direction. “The ASPIREverified audit results are a great indicator that focusing on the user experience and factoring accessibility into all development projects is the way to go, and as the EBSCO platform evolves we expect even more improvements that will positively impact the experience of all users.”

EBSCO eBooks offers access to the world’s finest collection of e-book content and is fully integrated with EBSCOhost® and EBSCO Discovery Service™. In addition to thousands of DRM-free titles, EBSCO eBooks offers more than 1,500,000 high-quality e-books and 100,000 audiobooks from more than 1,500 major academic publishers and university presses from around the world.

For more information about EBSCO eBooks, please visit: https://www.ebscohost.com/ebooks.

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, and clinical decisions 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 1,500,000 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:
Kathleen McEvoy
Vice President of Communications
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebsco.com