ProQuest is boosting the visibility of ebooks in library collections by indexing the full text of the entire catalog of EBL - Ebook Library in its Summon® discovery service. EBL’s expansive catalog of more than 400,000 ebooks is now even more discoverable
"This is another step in ProQuest's ongoing quest to create a seamless research environment and an especially important one as we bring EBL and ebrary together into one service," said Kari Paulson, ProQuest vice president and general manager, ebooks. "As we've already discovered with the full-text indexing of the ebrary collection, we can conquer a barrier to ebook use via Summon since it brings the library to the user."
"Our research shows that users often have questions around how to find ebooks," said Michael Hirsch, ProQuest vice president, product management. "Making them more discoverable and accessible through the Summon service enables us to fulfill both library objectives and user needs, and underscores the value of a high-quality and comprehensive index."
EBL has built a worldwide reputation for innovation focused on the specific needs of academic, research and corporate libraries. Its range of flexible access models includes Demand-driven Acquisition (DDA) as well as the unique Non-LinearTM Lending license. The Summon service will search across all of a library's EBL titles, including automatically-updated DDA holdings. As a result, an ebook purchase or loan can occur within the EBL platform, but start from the library's point of discovery, dramatically streamlining ordering and precisely tuning the library's holdings to users' needs.
The Summon service is renowned for its single, unified index that enables users to search all content at the same time, producing fast search response times with the highest degree of reliability. It leverages match and merge technology to combine, normalize, and correct full-text and metadata, such as abstracts, subject terms, thesauri and controlled vocabularies, citation counts, and enrichment data. Bringing together this information enhances relevance and increases discoverability of content, whether a user searches with natural-language queries or database-specific controlled vocabularies.
EBL's metadata has been indexed in Summon since 2009. Enhancing with full-text indexing of both EBL and ebrary catalogs is part of ProQuest's larger initiative to improve ebook visibility and accessibility in library collections. The full text of not only ebrary's expansive catalog, but the lauded HathiTrust collection as well are already indexed in the Summon service, enabling users to discover ebooks from the front door of the library. Ebook management and access will advance further when ProQuest launches the integrated platform for EBL and ebrary, designed to provide the broadest content, flexible access models, and exceptional user experience, all supported with rich analytics for data-driven decision-making.
About the Summon Service
Used by more than 700 libraries in more than 40 countries the Summon service is the first and only multitenant discovery service based on a single, unified index of content. More than 90 content types and more than 1.1 billion records are represented in the index, in which the vast majority of article and book content is full-text searchable. With groundbreaking features and a modern interface, the Summon discovery service continues to deliver an experience that resonates with users familiar with open web search engines. Streamlined navigation and contextual guidance features significantly advance the research experience and provide greater opportunities for librarians to deliver value and scale their services to connect with more users.
About ProQuest ebrary and EBL - Ebook Library
Encompassing pioneering companies ebrary and EBL - Ebook Library, ProQuest's ebook businesses enable works from the world's most authoritative publishers to be accessed electronically, online and offline, by libraries worldwide. With more than 24 years of combined experience partnering with libraries, publishers and researchers around the globe, ProQuest's ebrary and EBL offer the industry's most robust content selection and most innovative acquisition models. Only ProQuest provides libraries with so many choices to support their current workflow, optimize their budget and effectively serve end users.
Generated via ebrary's and EBL's relationships with 600+ publishers, more than 500,000 titles serve the unique research needs of students, scholars, professionals and other information seekers. Through platforms renowned for flexibility, libraries can customize their ebook collections to precisely fit with their users. EBL's and ebrary's Demand-driven and Patron-driven Acquisition models enable libraries to catalog and display thousands of titles, purchasing only if patrons download and use the works. ProQuest is currently integrating EBL and ebrary, creating an unparalleled ebook solution.
About ProQuest (www.proquest.com)
ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company's products are a gateway to the world's knowledge including dissertations, governmental and cultural archives, news, historical collections and ebooks. ProQuest technologies serve users across the critical points in research, helping them discover, access, share, create and manage information.
The company's cloud-based technologies offer flexible solutions for librarians, students and researchers through the ProQuest®, Bowker®, Dialog®, ebrary® and EBL® businesses - and notable research tools such as the Summon® discovery service, the ProQuest FlowTM collaboration platform, the PivotTM research development tool and the IntotaTM library services platform. The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with offices around the world.