Serials Solutions Goes Public

By Michael Rogers -- Library Journal, 06/01/2006

Serials Solutions, the electronic rights management (ERM) house that has become a favorite of many academic libraries, is trying its hand at the public library market and not in a small way: the ProQuest-owned company has cut a deal with SirsiDynix that has the Goliath ILS vendor acting as a reseller of Serials Solutions wares, including the ERMS life cycle managers for electronic subscriptions, Central Search federated search engine, Article Linker, OpenURL link resolver, and full MARC records service. All Serials Solutions products come standard with an Access and Management Suite featuring the company's A-to-Z Title List.

Commenting on the move into the public library sector, Jane Burke, general manager of Serials Solution and a ProQuest VP, told LJ, “Public libraries now are beginning to have large numbers of electronic resources just like the academics and need help managing them, and we're in the business of helping libraries manage their electronic resources.”

Burke revealed that there had been discussions about working with Dynix prior to its 2005 merger with Sirsi. “We had been a reseller of our Article Linker to Dynix, so this is an expansion of that arrangement. We've been talking about it since last September.” SirsiDynix benefits from the relationship by having “a single partner for a whole suite of services. Another element for them is that our solutions are hosted. That's particularly important in the public library arena,” Burke said.

While SirsiDynix is not entirely exclusive—Serials Solutions is the “preferred partner”—Burke said, “we don't have any plans for deals with other ILS vendors.” To fit the public library market, Serials Solutions won't have to alter the product, but Burke said there will be some minor tweaking to use Serials Solutions' federated search products inside Rooms and integrating its ERM solution with the acquisitions modules in SirsiDynix's dominant systems.

Its parent company's woes do not seem to be affecting Serials Solutions, and Burke said that they have 25 new openings this year.

Briefs

Indiana Cooperative Library Services Authority (INCOLSA) is using a custom WebFeat Search Prism solution to power INSPIRE, the Indiana Virtual Library, which sports more than 2200 member facilities. INSPIRE offers access to roughly 10,000 magazine titles plus almanacs, encyclopedias, newspapers, and other standard resources. INSPIRE can be accessed internally at any library throughout the state or remotely at www.inspire.net.

The Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) (www.carli.illinois.edu) is now offering its 180 members access to the Saskia (www.saskia.com) digital image archive contracted from Scholars Resource. According to CARLI, the collection contains 30,000 digital images of paintings, sculpture, and architecture.

Auto-Graphics has partnered with iTeam Resources to provide its customers with access to iTeams turnkey cost-recovery tools for academic and public libraries. According to Auto-Graphics, the partnership links its AGent customers to iTeam's “computer desktop management, computer reservation, computer desktop time management, print cost recovery, cash card systems, coin and bill devices, cash card readers, photo identification, e-commerce solutions, and library cards.”