ProQuest is streamlining librarian workflows by automating holdings updates for its ebooks businesses, ebrary and EBL – Ebook Library in the knowledgebase supporting the Summon® service as well as its 360 discovery and management services. The process, which is currently in beta testing, eliminates the need for librarians to manually load records and set holdings. Data that supports Demand-Driven Acquisition models will be automatically updated, making it simple for libraries to improve “just in time” collection development strategies.
“We are consistently looking for ways to simplify librarians’ tasks by integrating within ProQuest and with other organizations,” said Kevin Sayar, ProQuest Senior Vice President, Workflow Solutions. “This initiative has a dual benefit: it relieves the burden for librarians to maintain holdings and also enables more efficient marketing of collections by shortening the time between title availability and its discoverability. It’s an important step in achieving the ultimate goal of completely seamless holdings management and future services such as Intota will expand on this concept, delivering even more value.”
In addition to titles acquired through ebrary subscription and both businesses’ perpetual archive models, ebrary® and EBL® demand-driven titles will be automatically updated, simplifying access to ebooks within the Summon service, the most popular discovery layer in ARLs. The Summon service has a track record of innovative collaborations that enable rich, precise discovery of library collections. The service is the first and only service to work directly with publishers to build a single, unified index for delivery of fast, unbiased search results.
Optimization of ebook processes is also occurring on another front at ProQuest as it creates a single, unparalleled ebook solution encompassing both ebrary and EBL. Leveraging ebrary’s and EBL’s 24 years of combined experience helping libraries, publishers and researchers around the globe, the new solution will offer robust content selection, paired with the most flexible and innovative acquisition models. Libraries will have many options, making the best use of their budgets while effectively serving users.
