EBSCO Industries, Inc. announces the EBSCO Information Services (EIS) and EBSCO Publishing (EP) businesses will merge on July 1, 2013 and will operate as a single business under the name EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO). Tim Collins, a 26-year EBSCO veteran and previously President of EBSCO Publishing, will serve as President of the combined entity.
Dixon Brooke, EBSCO Industries, Inc. CEO commented, “While the two businesses have worked closely together for the past three decades, they have been pulled even closer together in recent years due to our customers’ desire for more integrated solutions. For example, we are in the process of integrating our popular A-to-Z with LinkSource service, previously operated by EIS, with our industry leading EBSCOhost and EBSCO Discovery Service solutions, operated by EP, for the benefit of librarians and their end users. We believe this merger of divisions will bring many future tangible benefits to our customers.”
Allen Powell, President of the subscription services division of EIS, who will now report to Collins, shared: “Our customers realize that the subscription service business is much more than just processing an order and sending it to a publisher. It is about improving the end users’ experience by maximizing discovery and access, while at the same time reducing our customers’ internal administrative costs. We are excited about this merger, as it facilitates more comprehensive integration of EBSCO’s many access and management tools which we are confident will benefit our customers.” All of EBSCO’s subscription services offices and operations will continue to report to Powell, who has worked for EBSCO for 22 years.
EBSCO continues to grow through increased market share and a constantly expanding suite of products and services. By combining the businesses, the company is emphasizing the importance of tight integration of products and services in order to heighten the overall value and benefit for customers and end users. For example, later this year, EBSCO will be releasing Full Text Finder™, the replacement to its existing A-to-Z with LinkSource product. While Full Text Finder will continue to be available as a standalone product, it will also be fully integrated into EBSCO’s popular EBSCOhost® and EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) product line. As Full Text Finder will be a component of EDS, customers will receive Full Text Finder at no additional charge.
All EBSCOhost customers will be able to manage their holdings via EBSCOadmin’s management module. This same module will be used by Full Text Finder to drive its publication browse and link resolver functionality as well as the full text limiter for EBSCOhost and EDS. Customers who buy their e-journals and e-packages from EBSCO will have the information regarding these purchases automatically populated into the EBSCOadmin holdings module, eliminating administrative time and insuring that users have seamless access to the content. Articles in e-journals and e-packages purchased via EBSCO will automatically be accessible via a single click from EBSCOhost databases and EDS via EBSCO’s industry leading SmartLinks™ technology.
“The initial integration highlights mentioned above are examples of how we expect this merger to better position us to provide comprehensive offerings to our customers,” commented Tim Collins. “The business will operate under the EBSCO Information Services name as this better describes our overall activities than the name EBSCO Publishing. However, we know that most of our customers know us and refer to us simply as ‘EBSCO’ and this is fine with us. We are still the same company our customers have worked with for more than seventy years.”
