Innovative, EBSCO Agree to Cross-Pollination of Discovery Search Results

EBSCO Publishing recently announced a new partnership with library automation company Innovative Interfaces (III) to provide the option of accessing EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) search results via III's Encore Discovery platform. Though the functionality will only be available for libraries that already use both services, it's an intriguing move to effectively consolidate results from the competitive discovery products—and could lead to more such partnerships among discovery companies down the line.

In January 2010, III announced a partnership to allow libraries integrated access to their EBSCOhost subscriptions through the Encore platform. EDS search results can draw on indexing from subscribed EBSCOhost databases, as well as various subscribed non-EBSCOhost databases, such as LexisNexis, among other content.

According to John McCullough, VP of III's Encore Division, III is currently working with an unspecified number of test libraries, who have yet to officially go live with the functionality, which will be available in the latest version of Encore (4.1).

EDS search results will be available via a dedicated application programming interface (API), allowing EDS results to be integrated into all Encore search results. Encore libraries will have the option to include EDS results at no additional charge.

Michael Gorrell, EBSCO Publishing's executive VP of technology and chief information officer, said that EBSCO is open to technology partnerships with other companies. "Having access to our API is something we would promote," he told LJ, adding that other discovery platforms could also potentially access EDS via the API.

Encore could also provide access to other services in the future, as it is designed to "integrate any service the library offers," according to III's McCullough, including other aggregation services or indexes. "Any service which can be exposed via APIs can be integrated into Encore the same way as EDS," he added.