InfoTech: Competition Heats Up Discovery Marketplace
Edited by David Rapp
Oct 15, 2010If competition is the hallmark of a robust market, then the discovery interface marketplace is plenty robust.
Every week sees new announcements from aggregate index discovery interface providers like OCLC (WorldCat Local), Ex Libris (Primo Central), Serials Solutions (Summon), and EBSCO (EBSCO Discovery Service) highlighting expanded content agreements, interface improvements, and important new customers.
The competition would seem to be greatest between EBSCO and Serials Solutions, which have spent the past year vying for academic customers.
This sometimes fierce competition will be underscored in early November when the Charleston Conference hosts a “side-by-side faceoff” of the two products “so librarians can see how they both work,” according to the conference program.
Broadly speaking, EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) offers an original base index of collected and normalized content searchable through the widely used EBSCOhost interface, with the capability to extend the search via connectors to other resources, like abstract and indexing products (the latter by means of EBSCO’s Integrated Search add-on).
Summon offers a similar aggregate index product positioned as a purpose-built interface that features a singular search experience, which the company claims works as well for tenured faculty as it does for first-year students. Summon does not include resources Serials Solutions has not indexed but aggressively seeks content partners to expand the index’s reach.
Critics (and competitors) contend that Summon’s single index will never achieve the complete coverage and metadata depth necessary to satisfy all researchers, while EBSCO’s detractors assert that EDS relies too heavily on connectors to external sources, a potential detriment to ease of use.
Gladiators in Charleston
Charleston is a fitting place for a showdown, as much of the recent back and forth traces its roots to the pages of the Charleston Advisor.
In April, an interview with Serials Solutions general manager Jane Burke prompted immediate response from EBSCO Publishing president Tim Collins, who attributed to Burke “many inaccurate assumptions related to EDS.” (Likewise, a supporting letter to the editor from Ex Libris Corporate VP Nancy Dushkin cited similarly “faulty” assertions.)
Stan Sorensen, Serials Solutions VP of product management and marketing, responded, issuing a challenge to a “head-to-head, live comparison in front of librarians,” which in turn prompted the addition of the Charleston session.
Customers in hand—what next?
Summon was released in July 2009, while EBSCO EDS was released in January 2010, yet both companies have garnered a significant number of customers. Serials Solutions recently touted its 100th Summon customer, and EBSCO says it is on track to do similarly in the next two quarters.
The market for these products seems to have turned a corner, with these companies no longer expending efforts to define a new product category. “I think we’ve all been trying to define what we’re doing,” Kathleen McEvoy, EBSCO public relations manager, told LJ.
Likewise, Sorensen explained that the increase in “visibility equals competition,” which means that the companies are shifting their energies from informing potential customers of the products to getting those customers to sign on the dotted line.
Meanwhile, libraries remain focused on serving user needs. University of Liverpool, originally a Summon beta site, recently signed on with EDS. In a brief message on the school’s website (since removed), the library announced the switch and listed 41 sources like GreenFILE, Historical Abstract, and Academic Search Complete (in addition to local catalog and repository content) indexed by EDS and needed by its faculty and students.
Libraries trying to evaluate the services—especially the content indexed by the two companies—would be wise to keep an eye on the news. Both companies regularly release a steady stream of partnership agreements with content providers, often mirroring each other.
For example, in July 2009, Serials Solutions announced the inclusion of Thomson Reuters’s popular Web of Science citation index in the Summon aggregate index. The company also noted that a citation count would be included with the search results (when available).
In July 2010, EBSCO revealed a partnership with Thomson Reuters that would likewise enable mutual customers to search Web of Science citations via EDS and link to the original records. In September, Serials Solutions put out word of the final live release of its Web of Science integration. This also includes giving subscribers of both Summon and Thomson Reuters’s Web of Knowledge (its broader citation search and analysis service) the option to display cited-by counts in search results “to highlight the highest impact articles for researchers.”
Look for major content partnerships to come and for reports from the faceoff in Charleston.—Josh Hadro
Ex Libris’s Grant Moves to Chief Librarian Role
Library automation company Ex Libris Group announced that Carl Grant, Ex Libris North America president since 2008, has been appointed to the newly created global position of chief librarian. Mark Triest, who has a background in educational technology, has been named Ex Libris North America president.
Grant told LJ that the new position of chief librarian arose out of the desire of Ex Libris to create a role to interact even more directly with the library profession—to write papers, participate in conferences, webinars, and standards forums, and otherwise engage in discussion in the library community.
Ex Libris’s creation of a chief librarian position may indicate a growing focus on customer relations at library tech companies. In July, for example, SirsiDynix named longtime employee Berit Nelson to the newly created position of VP of library relations and appointed eight additional library relations managers. (For an interview with Nelson, see here.)
Grant, who holds a master’s degree in information and library science from the University of Missouri-Columbia, became Ex Libris North America president two years ago; he had previously been president of Ex Libris (USA) from 1998 to 2003. From 2003 to 2007, Grant was president of VTLS.
UTSA Announces “Bookless Library”
University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) announced the official opening of its new Applied Engineering and Technology (AET) Library, which it is calling “the first completely bookless library on a university or college campus.”
No printed volumes are stored at the AET Library; students have access to 425,000 ebooks and 18,000 e-journal subscriptions on a variety of subjects. Those electronic collections are accessible to students from anywhere on- or off-campus.
UTSA dean of libraries Krisellen Maloney told LJ that the AET Library does have similar features to what are commonly called “information commons,” such as the one that opened in March 2009 at UTSA’s main John Peace Library. However, she said, “The primary difference is that it is a stand-alone, satellite library located in our [AET] building.”
The space has a capacity of just 80 people, with science and engineering librarians to assist students and faculty. It includes furnished study areas, ten desktop computers, two LCD screens that may be used by students for projects and three others that provide news and information, a printer, and a scanner. The library also plans to offer preloaded Kindle or iPad ereaders for student checkout.
UMKC Libraries’ Robotic Retrieval Rollout
In September, University of Missouri–Kansas City (UMKC) dedicated a new addition to its Miller Nichols Library, built to house its new $4 million HK Systems robotic retrieval system. It’s the 17th such system to be installed at a North American academic library.
The system will eventually hold about 800,000 volumes to be loaded in over the next few years. According to the university, that collection will take up about one-seventh of the floor space of traditional shelving, opening up approximately 85,000 square feet of space. (An additional 150,000–200,000 books will remain on open stacks for patron browsing.) The system, which currently contains primarily bound journals, is already being used by patrons.
The university’s student government staged a mass “robot dance” on campus to help publicize the system.
King County Goes Live with Evergreen
On September 22, King County Library System (KCLS), Issaquah, WA, went live with its customized open source Evergreen integrated library system (ILS). YouTube videos were soon posted documenting various parts of the library’s migration progress.
Up to now, many open source ILS migrations have been at smaller libraries. This go-live for the large suburban Seattle system is the latest milestone in a project geared toward getting large and small public library systems thinking about open source ILS possibilities.
Last year, KCLS was awarded a $998,556 (match $1,014,400) grant by the Institute of Museum and Library Services to partner with other public library systems, including Peninsula Library System (San Mateo, CA), Orange County Library System (Orlando, FL), and Ann Arbor District Library (MI), to develop “infrastructure components” to help ease the way for public libraries looking into migrating to an open source ILS.
One of the first parts of the new KCLS system that was brought online was the central distribution automated materials sorter, followed quickly by the capacity to check items in and out, including self-checkout, KCLS information technology services director Jed Moffitt told LJ. “The migration is going better than I could have ever anticipated, and at the same time there’s a ton of work to do,” he said. In the meantime, LJ will be following this project closely.
InfoTech Briefs
Peter Murray, who has authored the Disruptive Library Technology Jester blog since 2005, has been named by regional library organization LYRASIS to co-lead its LYRASIS Technology Services Program. He had previously been an assistant director at OhioLINK.
Hilary Newman has been promoted to VP of library services at Innovative Interfaces. She had previously been VP of implementation services at the company, where she has worked for more than 15 years.
Edmonton Public Library, Alta., announced that it had unveiled the first library vending machine in western Canada at a local rail transit station. The machine, which can contain some 400 items including paperbacks and DVDs, allows patrons to borrow and drop off materials.
SAGE will now be publishing all 18 of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ (IME) academic journals, including the 16 IME proceedings. SAGE now publishes 49 mechanical engineering journals.
