Welcome to the fifteenth issue of the Ex Librian newsletter. This issue focuses on the way in which scholarly usage data improves the research experience of our users. I believe that Ex Libris offers unique expertise in this area, with the company’s extensive experience in gathering usage data and developing new services that leverage such data.
All of us are aware of how usage data enables the providers of information, primarily Web search engines, to better address our information needs. A few years ago, Ex Libris set out to achieve the same goal in the scholarly arena—first, by means of our bX article recommender service: SFX logs contributed by hundreds of libraries around the world are gathered into a repository (the bX database), and the data from the logs is mined and analyzed to generate usage-based recommendations. The bX service has proven to be extremely helpful to millions of researchers, because the recommendations establish associations between items on the basis of selections made by fellow researchers rather than on the basis of query terms and textual clues.
However, the creation of recommendations was only the first step. Usage data enables us to better address researchers’ needs in various ways. For example, to assess a scholarly item’s significance, the system can use the number of times that researchers select the item, along with the item’s number of citations and a measure of the impact of the journal in which the item was published. With today’s rapid flow of information and the growing variety of material types and publishing practices, usage analysis has become a timely and appropriate assessment method. The combined measure, representing both usage data and citations, is implemented in the Primo relevance-ranking technology and helps Primo display the most relevant items at the top of result lists.
Usage data is also at the core of the new Hot Articles service, which highlights the articles in which researchers are currently showing the most interest. Planned for general release in early 2012, the service will be available free of charge for integration in any noncommercial Web site. More usage-based reports will be introduced in our resource-discovery solutions in 2012.
All this is only the beginning. Business intelligence is at the heart of the Alma library management service. With usage data from Alma, librarians will be able to make more informed decisions, optimize the use of their library resources, and provide their community with a high-quality, cost-effective research environment that is targeted to their community’s needs.
As we embark on 2012, I wish you all a year of peace, productivity, and fulfillment.
Sincerely yours,
Matti Shem Tov President and CEO, Ex Libris Group
Letter from the CEO
Letter from the CEO
January 2012
Dear Colleagues,
Welcome to the fifteenth issue of the Ex Librian newsletter. This issue focuses on the way in which scholarly usage data improves the research experience of our users. I believe that Ex Libris offers unique expertise in this area, with the company’s extensive experience in gathering usage data and developing new services that leverage such data.
All of us are aware of how usage data enables the providers of information, primarily Web search engines, to better address our information needs. A few years ago, Ex Libris set out to achieve the same goal in the scholarly arena—first, by means of our bX article recommender service: SFX logs contributed by hundreds of libraries around the world are gathered into a repository (the bX database), and the data from the logs is mined and analyzed to generate usage-based recommendations. The bX service has proven to be extremely helpful to millions of researchers, because the recommendations establish associations between items on the basis of selections made by fellow researchers rather than on the basis of query terms and textual clues.
However, the creation of recommendations was only the first step. Usage data enables us to better address researchers’ needs in various ways. For example, to assess a scholarly item’s significance, the system can use the number of times that researchers select the item, along with the item’s number of citations and a measure of the impact of the journal in which the item was published. With today’s rapid flow of information and the growing variety of material types and publishing practices, usage analysis has become a timely and appropriate assessment method. The combined measure, representing both usage data and citations, is implemented in the Primo relevance-ranking technology and helps Primo display the most relevant items at the top of result lists.
Usage data is also at the core of the new Hot Articles service, which highlights the articles in which researchers are currently showing the most interest. Planned for general release in early 2012, the service will be available free of charge for integration in any noncommercial Web site. More usage-based reports will be introduced in our resource-discovery solutions in 2012.
All this is only the beginning. Business intelligence is at the heart of the Alma library management service. With usage data from Alma, librarians will be able to make more informed decisions, optimize the use of their library resources, and provide their community with a high-quality, cost-effective research environment that is targeted to their community’s needs.
As we embark on 2012, I wish you all a year of peace, productivity, and fulfillment.
Sincerely yours,
Matti Shem Tov President and CEO, Ex Libris Group
The Primo ScholarRank Technology: Bringing the Most Relevant Results to the Top of the List
The Primo ScholarRank Technology
Tamar Sadeh, Director of Marketing
In today’s world, users’ expectations for a quick and easy search process, combined with an information landscape as large and complex as that covered by the Primo Central Index, render sophisticated relevance-ranking algorithms crucial to the success of the discovery process. In addition to the traditional assessment of the degree to which a retrieved item matches a user’s query, relevance-ranking algorithms need to take into account factors that relate to the academic significance of the retrieved item and to the context of the query: who submitted the query and what information need led the user to submit that query.
In March 2011, Ex Libris initiated a relevance-ranking project to enrich and optimize the original Primo® relevance-ranking algorithms. The algorithms that have thus far resulted from this project constitute the Ex Libris ScholarRank™ technology.
The project team includes members of the Ex Libris research and development staff and information-retrieval specialists. In addition, input from researchers who are located all over the world and work in various disciplines has helped the team establish metrics for the evaluation of the improvements that are made to the algorithms. In-depth information about the relevance-ranking project is available in a white paper, which you can obtain from your account manager.
Although relevance-ranking algorithms are not new in the context of information retrieval (IR) systems, the Ex Libris R&D team realized early on in the development of the Primo discovery and delivery solution that for optimal application to scholarly data, traditional IR algorithms would have to be adjusted and enhanced considerably. The current Primo relevance-ranking project is equipping the algorithms with new capabilities, which take into account a user’s background and information needs as well as the global scholarly significance of materials. The latter aspect is expressed as a measure of various factors, such as the number of citations that a publication has generated and usage information that reflects scholars’ interest in the publication. Along with these enhancements, the project team is adding a self-learning mechanism that feeds data back to the algorithms and helps the system constantly improve the order of search results over time. Together, all these features constitute the ScholarRank relevance-ranking technology; some of the features are already deployed by the Primo solution, and others will be implemented in 2012.
To determine the position of an item on a result list, ScholarRank is designed to take into account the following three elements:
The degree to which the item matches the query
A score representing the item’s scholarly value (referred to as the ScholarRank value score)
Information about the user and the user’s research need at the specific point in time
The match between a query and an item is calculated according to IR methods that have been adapted to the structure of the specific type of information (metadata, abstract, or full text). Not only do the proximity and order of the query terms in a result record have an impact on the ranking, but the field in which the query terms appear also has an effect; for example, if the terms appear in an item’s title, the item is likely to be more relevant to the user than an item for which the query words appear only in the full text. Furthermore, specific types of materials are typically more likely to satisfy user needs; for example, when all else is equal, a journal article is ranked higher than a newspaper article and a recent publication is ranked higher than an older one.
The ScholarRank value score represents an evaluation of an item’s academic significance regardless of the degree to which the item matches the query. To calculate the value score, the Primo ScholarRank technology relies on usage metrics derived from the bX article recommender database and other data, such as the item’s citation information.
The Primo ScholarRank technology also considers certain characteristics of a user to provide personalized ranking. Applying information about the user’s area of research, ScholarRank boosts materials related to the user’s discipline when the topic that is inferred from the query is ambiguous. Information about the user’s academic degree enables ScholarRank to boost materials that would be considered appropriate for that level; for instance, for a query submitted by a researcher who holds a Ph.D., in‑depth items would be among the highest ranked.
Finally, a user’s specific information need (a particular item or materials on a particular subject) is factored into the relevance-ranking equation. By analyzing a query, the Primo ScholarRank technology “infers” the user’s need and adapts to the type of search (a known-item search, narrow-topic search, broad-topic search, or author-related search). For example, in a broad-topic search, reference materials or review articles are likely to be more relevant to the user than an article dealing with a specific aspect of the subject matter.
Awareness of the huge impact of relevance ranking on the success of the discovery process has brought the ScholarRank technology to the forefront of research at Ex Libris.
The goal of the work invested in the Primo relevance-ranking algorithms is to enable academic users to find the exact scholarly materials that they need—and find them quickly. By shortening users’ discovery time, Primo improves their productivity, draws more traffic to the library site, and helps achieve optimal use of library collections. As a result, Primo enables libraries to better serve their community and their institution’s mission and to gain the prominence that they deserve in the provision of scholarly information.
The research and development work on the ScholarRank technology is an ongoing effort and will continue to introduce enhancements. Additional methods of personalizing relevance ranking will be added to the algorithms, as well as more features drawn from relationships between researchers, authors, and scholarly materials.
Ex Libris Goes Audiovisual
Ex Libris has recently introduced a series of short “plain and simple” videos that describe the company’s technologies. Through this light, humorous approach, we hope to draw your attention to our new initiatives. You can use these videos to help explain to staff, faculty, and students the solutions that you are implementing or are considering implementing. More detailed materials about our solutions are available on the Ex Libris documentation portal for those who seek an in-depth understanding.
The following videos are available on YouTube and the Ex Libris Web site, and more are in the works:
Optimize, Analyze, Utilize: How Alma makes Library Usage Data Valuable to the Institution
Optimize, Analyze, Utilize: How Alma makes Library Usage Data Valuable to the Institution
Barbara Rad-El, Senior Librarian
With the general release of the Ex Libris Alma library management service on the horizon, this issue of the newsletter offers our readers a perfect opportunity to explore the ways in which Alma works to benefit academic and research libraries. Among its many unified workflows, which eliminate the need to duplicate operations for electronic, print, and digital collections, Alma offers services that use data from the library’s ongoing activities to facilitate management and operational decisions. In essence, Alma continuously recycles usage data to enhance the experience of both library staff and users.
This article looks briefly at three areas in which Alma employs usage data for the benefit of staff and users: collection management, metadata management, and analytics.
Collection Management
Alma contains a suite of collection-development functions for both the initial selection of electronic resources and their evaluation. Through trial and evaluation workflows, libraries can receive recommendations from staff, faculty, and end users. Purchase and renewal decisions are made easier with enriched data stored by Alma, such as complete metadata, usage and cost-per-use information, overlap analysis, and the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) impact factor of specific journals. Ex Libris is also exploring opportunities to connect Alma to third-party resources that will help librarians evaluate and make decisions about new and ongoing subscriptions.
By integrating trial and evaluation decisions into the broader acquisition workflow, Alma streamlines the processing of acquisitions and technical services, enables staff to address the academic priorities of collection development, and provides richer information on the library’s history of collection-development decisions. Subscription recommendations (by users or staff) and subscription approvals trigger the next stage in the acquisition cycle, thereby enabling staff to focus on tasks that require mediation while the system automates the rest.
Alma automatically prompts library staff to evaluate current subscriptions for electronic resources, such as journal and e-book packages, both annually and prior to subscription end. On the basis of usage data, staff can make informed decisions about whether to renew or cancel a subscription. If staff members decide to renew, Alma automatically extends the activation period for the resource.
Library managers can create surveys in Alma to poll specific users or groups of users on their views of current subscriptions. Examples of predefined questions for such surveys include the following:
Is the interface user friendly?
Which journals are the most useful in the package?
How do you rate the academic level of the journal?
Do you recommend renewing the subscription to the resource?
A future direction that we are investigating would enable peer institutions that are not members of the same consortium to see one another’s e-resource holdings. This capability would help librarians determine whether particular packages are worth acquiring.
Metadata Management and Inventory
The Alma metadata management system merges centralized and local approaches to library cataloging. The system is divided into two parts: a Library Zone and a Community Zone.
Similar to a traditional catalog, the Library Zone is composed of local catalogs over which individual institutions or consortia maintain stewardship.
The Community Zone consists of a central catalog of bibliographic and authority records that the whole community accesses and manages. Up to now, libraries across the world have been describing and managing many of the same resources, but the cataloging environment has required each library to download and manage the records locally.
In the Community Zone, libraries can bring their catalogs out of their silos and onto the network. When one library enhances a record in the central catalog, all libraries linked to that record benefit immediately. Not only is the maintenance burden of local metadata management reduced, but the central records are also improved by ongoing community enrichment.
With Alma’s metadata management system, bibliographic data becomes an ever more powerful and vibrant tool to support the objectives of both the library and the institution. By reducing duplication and enhancing the depth of available information for all users, the system embodies Alma’s commitment to the sharing and strengthening of data.
Figure 1. Example of a record in a local catalog. The icon at the upper left indicates that the record originated in the community zone.
Analytics
Academic libraries are home to a wealth of information about the research behavior of the entire population of the institution—from the most senior faculty member to the newest undergraduate. As trends within research and learning change, libraries are continuously gathering and recording data on research interests, student habits, and favored scholarly resources.
Under increasing pressure to demonstrate their value to their institution or consortium, libraries are always looking for more creative ways to improve efficiency and productivity. Powerful analytics enable libraries to put numbers on their value and to present tangible evidence of their leading role in the academic realm. Analytics shed light on the inner workings of the entire institution, not only the library.
The Alma Analytics business intelligence tool generates reports based on libraries’ collection and usage data. These reports offer insights on trends and operational statistics, thus helping library managers make strategic decisions.
Staff can view the analytics data in several ways:
As graphs on the home page. The graphs present budget usage, acquisition data, and other types of information.
In predefined dashboards that users view by navigating from a menu
As embedded reports that users can filter and customize
Figure 2. An Alma Analytics graph
Using Alma Analytics, librarians can create and export their own reports and can access data easily. In line with Alma’s open architecture, libraries can integrate their own reporting software rather than using Alma Analytics.
Looking ahead, we plan to incorporate some exciting functionalities in Alma’s releases during 2013. For example, Alma will load purchase recommendations from vendors for consideration by library staff, who may choose to approve the recommendations, reject them, or defer the decision to a later date. To facilitate usage-based decisions, Alma will display the history of these decisions when subsequent recommendations for the same resource are under review.
Among other valuable features planned for the future is an option to publish recommendations in the discovery interface. When a resource that is currently under consideration appears in a list of results for a user with the appropriate authorization, that user can place a purchase request. The request will create a fast-track acquisition order and deliver the resource to the user when it is received.
Getting back to the present, we will soon be ushering in Alma, with its general release only a few weeks away. We look forward to hearing your thoughts via Twitter to @ExLibrisGroup and by e‑mail to ProductUpdates@exlibrisgroup.com.
Top of the Pops, or How bX Technology Serves the Scholarly Researcher
Top of the Pops, Or How bX Technology Serves the Scholarly Researcher
Jørgen Madsen, Primo Product Manager
Many of you will have heard that we recently incorporated data from the bX article recommender into our relevance-ranking algorithm for the Primo Central Index. Take a look at our short video about the Ex Libris relevance-ranking technology, which is called ScholarRank.
If you are not familiar with bX, here’s a short explanation: bX aggregates millions of records logging the scholarly usage of electronic resources. The structured analysis of these records serves as a basis for the bX scholarly recommender service.
The usage records on which the bX recommender service is based originate from log files generated by the SFX® OpenURL link resolver. These log files reveal selection paths followed by thousands of members of the scholarly community who are using SFX. Harnessing such discovery paths, bX recommendations lead end users to relevant content that they might not have actively searched for.
When we incorporated the bX analyses of usage records into the Primo® relevance-ranking algorithm, we saw an immediate, visible improvement: on the result pages of Primo searches, fewer users clicked the Next Page link, while more users clicked the Get It button. In other words, more users found what they were looking for on the first page of results.
Based on millions of daily transactions, bX offers a vast wealth of data and a sophisticated technology framework that can be used to provide many different services to libraries and researchers. In short, bX is truly a gold mine.
Just how much of a gold mine bX really is rapidly became clear to us. Although SFX is an Ex Libris solution, it is deployed in all kinds of places and on various platforms. SFX is used via Google Scholar and other discovery solutions, as well as in a wealth of important primary and secondary databases belonging to commercial information providers. In view of the extremely broad base of global scholarly usage on which the bX analyses are based, we began to look more closely into the usage metrics embedded in bX and ways of harnessing the metrics to provide additional unique services. Our next step was to examine what content users who view bX recommendations are actually selecting.
Given that Primo Central is targeted at scholars, we wanted to investigate the relative importance of individual journals as reflected by scholarly usage. We therefore set two broad goals for this investigation:
To gain an understanding of the “value” of specific journals as demonstrated by bX data—in other words, to identify the journals that members of the global scholarly community “voted” the most useful by clicking articles therein
To determine the proportion of the most used journals (according to data collected in bX) that are indexed by Primo Central
The results of our investigation were a surprise even to us. Ex Libris has served academic libraries for decades. We understand that scholars are interested mainly in scholarly material, and scholars rely heavily on journal articles from other scholars in their research area. Therefore, focusing on scholarly content has been the strategy for Primo Central from day one and will continue to be such. How perfectly aligned this strategy is with the needs of our customer base became clear when we discovered that over 99% of the selections that users make as a result of viewing bX recommendations are for articles published in journals that we have indexed in Primo Central—as shown in the figure. This result confirms the success of Primo Central in indexing the world’s most important scholarly materials.
Figure 1. Usage of Journals Covered by Primo Central
With this kind of data, we can now provide libraries with reports indicating what percentage of their most frequently used journals is included in Primo Central, as well as the percentage of all their journals. Information on the Primo Central coverage of journal titles that users actually select is clearly more valuable. In fact, we believe that this type of information could be of such importance that libraries would potentially adjust their subscriptions or renegotiate content packages.
Ultimately, we at Ex Libris have the same vision as libraries: we want information to be accessible so that it can find the right user in the right context at the right time. We have taken the first step toward this goal, and you can expect to hear a lot more from us about this activity in the future.
Preserving Research Data with Ex Libris Rosetta at ETH-Bibliothek
Preserving Research Data with Ex Libris Rosetta at ETH-Bibliothek
Matthias Töwe, Head of Digital Curation at ETH-Bibliothek Ido Peled, Rosetta Product Manager
Research data represents the complete results of research and at the same time constitutes the primary input for new research. Research across virtually all knowledge domains has been and still is being transformed by digital technologies. The value of research data in digital form is clear to everyone, from researchers and students to librarians and the general public.
Research data, unlike digital information about cultural heritage (which often comes in the form of images, documents, and videos), can come in a huge variety of types and formats. This diversity, in addition to the rapidly increasing volume of such data, presents academia as a whole with major new challenges.
One of the principal challenges facing academic libraries is to preserve the valuable data emanating from research. Most academic institutions will admit that the vast majority of research data is stored today by researchers themselves, a practice that creates an extra burden for scholars and at the same time puts data at risk for many reasons, including the following:
The vulnerability of digital data in a dynamic local environment with high staff mobility
The absence of a cross-institutional policy on managing research data
A lack of standardization in metadata, formats, and procedures
The absence of centralized control and risk management of research data
Recently Ex Libris partnered with ETH-Bibliothek, the largest scientific library in Switzerland and one of the leading scientific and technical libraries in Europe, to initiate a project that would tackle the preservation of digital research data and provide ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, with a sustainable digital preservation solution.
Figure 1. ETH Zurich and Ex Libris workship on Research Data
As stated in the final report of the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access, “each domain should develop partnerships with data scientists or informatics specialists.”[1] Following this recommendation, the project team first set up a proof of concept that would demonstrate the role and value of libraries in preserving research data. For the proof of concept, four groups of researchers from ETH Zurich were selected from different fields of expertise:
Pharmacists who need to preserve submitted manuscripts, including all figures, all tables, and the data employed to create them
Agricultural and food scientists with sets of survey data that various group members use as a basis for their research
Environmental scientists with sets of both survey and measurement data to be preserved
Theoretical physicists who need to preserve their submitted manuscripts and all figures, tables, data, and modeling procedures in a form that can be permanently accessed
Working with the four groups, ETH-Bibliothek and Ex Libris are now trying to analyze the unique requirements for the digital preservation of each group’s research data.
Ultimately, the goal is to provide a set of simple-to-use workflows that will enable researchers at ETH Zurich to submit their research data, supporting materials, metadata, and more to library staff; to set the relevant policies (such as retention period and access rights); and to receive in return a persistent link to the data. Through integration of the research data with the Ex Libris Primo® discovery and delivery solution as the user interface, ETH-Bibliothek and its researchers are hoping to see greater reuse of research data both internally and—where permitted—by third-party users.
Figure 2. Research Data lifecycle
Once ETH-Bibliothek has received the research data, the library will be responsible for ensuring the long-term preservation of and access to the data. For this purpose, ETH‑Bibliothek will use the Ex Libris Rosetta digital preservation solution. Rosetta will enable the library to set up submission workflows for researchers and provide services for both bit preservation and content preservation. When these tasks have been accomplished, the library will be able to expand the preservation of research data to additional fields.
The first quarter of 2012 will see the release of a new bX service known as Hot Articles. Like the bX article recommender, the first bX service from Ex Libris, Hot Articles leverages usage data from millions of scholars around the globe.
By analyzing the article selections made by scholars at many institutions worldwide, the bX article recommender service generates recommendations tailored to each researcher’s interests. The service has proven to be a great success, with over 1,000 institutions adopting it in the two years since its release. This rapid rate of adoption demonstrates that complementing searches with discovery services based on usage data delivers substantial value to users.
The new bX Hot Articles service presents an additional discovery experience. Whereas the recommender service focuses on the context of the article that a user is viewing, Hot Articles looks at topics and provides a list of the articles related to a specific topic that were viewed the most in recent months. The service therefore exposes trends within the user’s subject area, and offers possibilities for further reading.
Hot Articles is a free service that libraries, academic institutions, and end users can integrate into their Web pages or use for building their own applications. The service was released to early adopters in December 2011 and will be released to the general public in February 2012.
If you would like a glimpse of the Hot Articles version released in December, check out the subject pages of Charles University in Prague. When Hot Articles is available to the general public, institutions and users will be able to sign up at www.exlibrisgroup.com/category/bXOverviewto implement the service.
Bring on the Data: Evidence-based Strategic Planning
Bring on the Data: Evidence-based Strategic Planning
Mike Dicus, Voyager Product Manager
Like other organizations, libraries face an ongoing demand for higher levels of service amid the constraints of shrinking budgets and smaller staffs. More than ever, libraries need to make data-driven decisions that will enable staff to anticipate patron needs, work more efficiently throughout the library, and use available funds for the most productive results.
Unfortunately, the information needed to make these decisions is often difficult for library staff to obtain and analyze, for a variety of reasons. For example, data is often distributed among silos that can’t be integrated; the processing of data can be extremely time consuming; and many reporting tools require specialized expertise.
Ex Libris provides a solution for Voyager customers who seek to facilitate the reporting process. Voyager Analyzer is a comprehensive reporting and analysis system that brings business intelligence capabilities into the library environment to provide staff with enhanced insight into operational and institutional data. This intuitive yet sophisticated solution enables libraries to generate usage, financial, productivity, and ad hoc reports that present the data needed for better decision-making about collection development, service deployment, and more.
The Web-based graphical interface of Voyager Analyzer simplifies data collection and evaluation. By monitoring departmental and collection activity, producing customized reports to support special projects or local management needs, and assisting staff in managing workflows and events, Analyzer increases user satisfaction, improves staff productivity, and decreases the library’s operating costs.
Not only does Voyager Analyzer offer a number of predefined reports, but it also includes straightforward tools for ad hoc reporting and the analysis of library activity. Analyzer improves operational efficiency and productivity by identifying bottlenecks and tracking workflows. Ad hoc reports focused on departmental functions as well as cross-library issues decrease operating costs by helping staff allocate the appropriate resources to the activities and services that are most effective.
In addition to reports, Voyager Analyzer provides dashboards that display key metrics reflecting up-to-date information about library operations. With this information, the management of personnel, physical and electronic collections, and budgets is easier and more efficient.
Voyager Analyzer is simple to set up, so library staff can install it and start creating reports in real time without technical assistance. As a result, the IT team is free to focus on other projects in the library and throughout the campus.
As a business intelligence solution designed for libraries, Voyager Analyzer offers library staff a comprehensive view of the operational data that is required for making effective and efficient decisions. Shouldn’t everything be this easy?
MetaLib+: A Technological Leap for Electronic Discovery
MetaLib+: A Technological Leap for Electronic Discovery
Yisrael Kuchar, MetaLib and SFX Product Manager
Information-discovery systems have taken on an increasingly larger role in our users’ lives in recent decades. As the information universe continues to grow and technology progresses, the expectations and needs of our users are also undergoing change. Today’s users expect to search across multiple (relevant) sources or databases, retrieve results that are relevant to their query, and obtain the full text for those results. The typical user expects electronic discovery and delivery to be instant.
When federated searching was introduced a few years ago, it provided an effective solution that met researchers’ requirements. Federated searches are faster than searching each database separately; they pull all the results into a single page; they incorporate clustering, which enables users to carry out post-search filtering; and, finally, they link the user to full text via a link resolver. However, our users today expect search times of a fraction of a second, comprehensive coverage of relevant resources, and state-of-the-art relevance ranking. Our goal remains the same: to provide our MetaLib® customers with the best electronic discovery and delivery solution without limiting them to one technology framework or another. Technology should simply provide the means to an end.
In early 2011, Ex Libris announced the Primo® Service for Metalib Customers, later branded MetaLib+, which combines the MetaLib federated search functionality with the advantages of the cloud-based Primo technology and the Primo Central Index of scholarly materials. We are proud to note that after starting with four adopters at the beginning of 2011, MetaLib+ exceeded the 200‑site landmark by the end of the year.
In a survey carried out in the fall of 2011, MetaLib+ customers were asked to evaluate this new service. As we hoped, they indeed like it! All of the customers who responded said that they would recommend this service to other institutions. (Two customers explained that they are still implementing the service and hence could not yet comment on that question.)
When asked why they would recommend MetaLib+, some survey respondents gave the following replies:
“The speed of searching is one of the major factors that will improve the students’ experience. Also, the ability to display only those articles for which full text is available is a big bonus for undergraduates. The interface is much more intuitive for both search and discovery.” (Aston University)
“Fast and reliable, and Primo Central has a lot of content.” (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitàries de Catalunya)
“Because it significantly improves the discovery experience of scholars who are seeking electronic materials.” (Fundacao para a Computacao Cientifica Nacional)
“Easy to use, provides easy access to full-text resources.”(Queen Mary, University of London)
MetaLib+ offers all MetaLib customers a next-generation discovery experience for their library users and transforms several important aspects of discovery. Search performance is faster than via traditional MetaLib, with results displayed instantaneously. MetaLib+ uses the sophisticated relevance-ranking algorithms of Primo, generating accurate and highly relevant results for every search topic. In addition, Primo Central covers the vast majority of the resources commonly required by researchers. Users who want to search in special databases that are not covered by Primo Central can complement their query by searching in MetaLib without switching to a different interface.
We see federated searching as an important technology that complements index-based searching. We remain committed to federated searching to cover the long tail of resources that are perhaps not available within index-based searches. At the same time, evidence from the field shows that the majority of users prefer to use the latter for the bulk of their research, and for that reason, we have made sure that index-based searching is available to all MetaLib customers.
All MetaLib customers may obtain MetaLib+ without any additional license, maintenance, or hosting fee. To arrange for implementation, contact your account manager or your Ex Libris office or distributor.
Whether you are currently using MetaLib as a local or hosted service, we would like to welcome you and the entire the MetaLib community on board to enjoy the rich road map and technology of Primo discovery for your electronic materials.
Get It Now at the California State University System
Get It Now at the California State University System
Marvin Pollard, Digital Library Services Manager, California State University
The Get It Now service, from the Copyright Clearance Center, delivers scholarly journal articles directly to library users within minutes. Surveys conducted in academic library communities in the United States have demonstrated, time and again, that easy and quick access to articles is the most frequently requested service by library users. SFX pioneered the immediate lookup of articles available in online and print collections for library researchers. With the Get it Now service, SFX can deliver user expectations for immediate access to content, whether or not that content is covered by a library’s license agreement or is available in the library’s print and microform collections.
Developed with the participation of the California State University (CSU), one of the largest university systems in the world, and the Information Delivery Services (IDS) Project, a resource-sharing management system developed and maintained by the State University of New York at Geneseo, Get It Now enables library users to receive PDF copies of articles from journals to which their library doesn’t subscribe. Following CSU’s successful pilot implementation of Get It Now, Ex Libris recently added the service to the SFX® OpenURL link resolver for customers in the United States (the Copyright Clearance Center offers Get It Now only to U.S. libraries).
At the CSU library system, which serves over 440,000 students and faculty, the Get it Now service is seamlessly integrated with our SFX system and the libraries’ user-driven information discovery and content delivery system. Before CSU implemented the service, users were picking up only half of all interlibrary loan (ILL) requests. With the integration of Get It Now with SFX, all requests are delivered directly to a user’s e-mail account within a few minutes. Even more exciting, CSU users have been requesting unsubscribed articles at times when a traditional ILL request would not have been possible—around three quarters of requests are placed during the evening, weekends, and holidays.
Get It Now covers tens of thousands of articles from over 8,400 journals from leading publishers, including Elsevier, John Wiley & Sons, Wolters Kluwer, Nature Publishing Group, and the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Publishers are being added on an ongoing basis.
So how does Get It Now work at CSU? The SFX KnowledgeBase and the sophisticated display logic available in SFX provide real-time evaluation of user information needs. When the requested content is not locally owned or licensed, SFX provides a channel for licensing the requested item in real time, via the Get it Now service. Articles are delivered in minutes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.
Users of the Get it Now service praise it for delivering difficult-to-obtain content within minutes, directly from the publisher, in the item’s original full-color, digital format. Delivering content to users when they are conducting their research clearly makes the content more useful and rewards their investment of time and effort.
The SFX KnowledgeBase provides the foundation for a service whose goal is to make all scholarly information available in real time when users need it. The Get it Now service provides a virtual collection of content that would otherwise exceed the purchasing capabilities of the CSU libraries.
Although simple in design, a local implementation of an unmediated Get it Now service requires some sophisticated system integration. Support from Ex Libris for this integration should greatly facilitate the implementation of the Get it Now service in other academic libraries in North America.
The CCC Get It Now service can be used out-of-the-box from Primo and other sources via SFX. If you are interested in using this service please contact CCC at licensing@copyright.com or 978-750-8400 x2468
Results Are In! Learning Center Users Give a Round of Applause to Ex Libris Training
Learning Center Users Give a Round of Applause to Ex Libris Training
Yael Shalev, Training Team Leader
A recent survey of subscribers to the Ex Libris Learning Center provided some enlightening results, expressing overall satisfaction with the Center’s learning experience. The Center’s users hail from hundreds of institutions in 36 countries and include the full spectrum of Ex Libris customers: small research libraries, academic institutions, national libraries, state libraries, museums and archives, and corporate and religious organizations.
Launched in 2009 in response to demand from our customer community, the Learning Center is an online resource that provides our customers with round-the-clock access to a wide range of lessons on various aspects of the Ex Libris product suite. The lessons augment on-site and Web-based training that organizations opt for when implementing a new Ex Libris product. The Learning Center now offers over 130 courses consisting of more than 280 lessons covering almost all Ex Libris products (Aleph, Voyager, Primo, SFX, MetaLib, DigiTool, and Verde).
The respondents to the Learning Center survey indicated that their experience with the Learning Center was positive; 66% of respondents are satisfied or very satisfied with the Learning Center, and 87% said that the lessons helped them perform their job better.
Stephen Gillespie, associate director of library resources at Australia’s RMIT University, noted in his survey response that the Learning Center “is a great initiative, and I am glad Ex Libris has put the effort into creating it.”
A Learning Center user from Valdosta State University in the United States, Sherrida Crawford, commented: “I think the Learning Center is a very worthwhile training venue. I have been unable to attend ELUNA for the past couple of years; the Learning Center filled in much of the information that I had sought in attending ELUNA in previous years.”
We’re delighted that users of the Learning Center find it helpful, but we still have many goals to achieve. We’ll continue adding training resources for the benefit of the entire Ex Libris customer community.
All About Alma: An Update from Ex Libris North America
All About Alma: An Update from Ex Libris North America
Tony Zanders, Director of Customer Development , Ex Libris North America
2011 was a formative year for our region. Many of our team members have been hard at work preparing for the general release of Alma – our next generation, unified resource management system. Here’s a recap of some major milestones that took place in the Alma journey over the past few months.
There’s no better indicator of the response to a system than the institutions who have made the decision to adopt it. During the Fall, we successfully concluded the North American Alma Early Adopter program.Led by a tireless team of individuals including Ray Jankoski and Susan Stearns, the program welcomed a wide range of academic institutions into our community as Alma customers. You can read the full press release here.
The Alma Early Adopter Kickoff
To culminate the Early Adopter program, we hosted the Alma Early Adopter Kickoff: an intensive, two-day workshop in our Chicago headquarters where 10 new Alma customers shared motivations for moving to Alma, along with plans on how the system will impact their strategic roadmaps. The gathering was a great success, serving as the beginning of an exciting relationship among institutions that have made the decision to help shape the future of libraries.
The North American Alma Early Adopters
Alma Executive Briefing Series
Many of our team members were traveling the country during the Early Adopter Kickoff to meet with library leaders to discuss the impact Alma would have on their institutions. From October 4th to December 4th, we partnered with 16 customer sites to host the Alma Executive Briefing Series – a tour of North America’s finest academic campuses to introduce Alma to the library community. This allowed us to begin a dialogue with over 300 librarians on how today’s needs are vastly different from the time when their first ILS was being evaluated.And in light of those changes, we received an overwhelmingly positive response to how Alma was designed to meet the challenges of the 21st century library.
A collage of images taken from various Alma Executive Briefings throughout Fall 2011
2012 and Beyond
As we prepare for Alma’s general release in the coming months, we’re maintaining the momentum from the marketplace with several opportunities to see Alma in action:
ALA Midwinter 2012: At the ALA Annual Midwinter Meeting, Ex Libris is joining with four new Alma customers to discuss the impact the system is having on areas including change management, collection development and new collaborative efforts made possible through the system.
Code{4}Lib 2012: For those library developers who are making the trek to Seattle, Alma will be in full force at the 2012 code4lib conference, joined by Primo, where Tamar Sadeh will be delivering a paper on our relevance ranking technology, Primo ScholarRank.
ER&L 2012: In April, we’re making our way back to Texas for the 6th annual Electronic Resources in Libraries conference. Libraries participating in this event will have the opportunity to hear from Alma Development Partners on their experience working with the system in areas including collection development.
To help you keep track of these events and more, we are launching discoveralma.com in mid January: an online resource designed to help you dive into Alma. On the site, visitors will be able to learn what makes Alma unique, register for live and virtual demonstrations, hear feedback from other libraries about why Alma is “the most advanced system in the library industry today.”
We predict that 2012 will be no less exciting than 2011, and we look forward to your feedback as we continue working to transition our customers safely into the next generation of library technology.
Alma Days: The Australian and New Zealand Alma Road Show
Alma Days: The Australian and New Zealand Alma Road Show
Holley Dumble, Director of Sales, Australia and New Zealand
During July 2011, Susan Stearns, vice president for strategic partnerships, and Barbara Rad-El, Ex Libris senior librarian (aka Super Librarian), joined Holley Dumble, director of sales in Australia and New Zealand, and Jo-Anne Rivers, sales manager, on a journey across the region to demonstrate the Ex Libris Alma next-generation unified resource management solution. The road show launched our first comprehensive campaign to introduce Alma to the Australian and New Zealand library market. While we welcomed the opportunity to expand our customers’ knowledge and awareness of Alma, we were also keen on extending interest in Alma to a much wider audience.
A truly mammoth event, the road show consisted of four sessions in four Australian states and two sessions in New Zealand, all in just eight days.
We kicked off Alma Days—as the road show was known—in sunny Perth, Western Australia, where customers and prospects alike joined us in a newly completed building at the Central Institute of Technology Perth campus, part of the Technical and Further Education (TAFE) college network.
At the beginning of each road show event, Susan described the strategic vision behind Alma, highlighting the key benefits and value of a truly unified resource management solution. She discussed some of the current trends, new services that Alma will deliver, and the transition to the cloud infrastructure.
Super Librarian Barbara then dove into Alma with a live demonstration of a recently released portion of the software. (Alma is being released in incremental stages to Ex Libris development partners for testing; at this time, the fourth such partner release, the last step before Alma’s general release in 2012, is undergoing testing.) Barbara’s demonstration took the group through the functionality of the third partner release, focusing on the unification of electronic, print, and digital resource management. We were pleased by the audience’s enthusiastic response to the digitization workflow and the seamless integration between Alma and the Primo® discovery and delivery solution.
From Perth, the Alma road show traveled across the country to Brisbane, where we conducted a session at the State Library of Queensland. The road show then moved to Sydney, for a session at the State Library of New South Wales, and on to a session at our final destination in Australia, RMIT University in Melbourne.
The State Library of Queensland
At the Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne sessions, we were pleased to have the opportunity to hear from participants hailing from our Australian and New Zealand Alma collaborative partner institutions, who shared with us their vision and their thoughts on how Alma will enable them to meet their strategic goals in the near future.
We are grateful to Anna Raunik, executive manager of resource management for client services and collections at the State Library of Queensland; Tony Cargnelutti, associate director at UNILINC Limited; and Sue Clarke, director of information resources at Monash University, for participating and adding local flavor to these road show sessions. Hearing about their experiences and their reasons for engaging in the regional Alma collaborative partnership program was instructive for the Ex Libris team.
The Alma road show team then traveled across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand, where we visited Wellington for a session hosted by the National Library of New Zealand. In Auckland, our final stop, we were guests of the University of Auckland.
Throughout the road show, the response from audience participants was extremely positive, with a key theme emerging: libraries are enthusiastic and ready to embrace the next generation of Ex Libris solutions. The road show enabled the Australian Ex Libris team to engage with customers in depth while also introducing the Ex Libris unified resource management framework and vision to other libraries across the region. Over 350 people from 64 organizations attended the road show events.
We will continue to update you on our progress with Alma over the coming months. For further information about Alma for institutions in Australia and New Zealand, contact Holley Dumble or Jo-Anne Rivers.
Rosetta Advisory Group’s Second Annual Meeting
Rosetta Advisory Group’s Second Annual Meeting
Ido Peled, Rosetta Product Manager
Following an eventful year of activity, members of the Rosetta Advisory Group and invited guests from around the world gathered in Zurich for the second annual Rosetta Advisory Group meeting, hosted by ETH-Bibliothek. Launched in 2010, the Rosetta Advisory Group offers its members a valuable forum for discussing wide-ranging topics related to digital preservation, such as preservation technology, format migration, and future preservation strategies.
The latest two-day meeting combined presentations from Ex Libris and international Rosetta customers, who reported on the status of their projects and their upcoming plans. Following greetings by Dr. Wolfram Neubauer, director of ETH-Bibliothek, and Matti Shem Tov, CEO and president of Ex Libris, participants were given a tour of ETH-Bibliothek’s impressive facilities, notably the library’s special collections, and the digitization center.
The remainder of the first day was dedicated to Ex Libris updates, including Carl Grant’s presentation on the company’s long-term digital preservation strategy. Mr. Grant, former chief librarian at Ex Libris, outlined some of the latest trends in the world of digital preservation, such as knowledge sharing and cloud computing, and emphasized the role of Rosetta as an integral part of the Ex Libris product suite.
Figure 1. Full concentration from the members of the advisory group
Paul Ayris, president of the Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER) and director of UCL Library Services, opened the second day of the meeting with his keynote presentation, “Digital Preservation Activity: Issues for the Creation of a Digital Europe.” Dr. Ayris gave an overview of the European information landscape, describing some of the most exciting initiatives, among them the LIFE (Life Cycle Information for E-Literature) project. The purpose of LIFE, a collaboration between the British Library and UCL, is to develop a methodology for modeling the digital life cycle and to calculate the costs of preserving digital information for the next 5, 10, or 20 years.
Presentations by numerous Rosetta customers, including Binghamton University, the National Library of New Zealand, the Bavarian State Library, and Archives New Zealand, highlighted many of the system’s capabilities and uses. Exploring emerging trends in digital libraries and digital preservation, speakers covered topics such as the following:
Certification and auditing processes for digital preservation solutions
Cloud computing, hosting, and digital preservation services
The handling of varied preservation requirements from different types of institutions (libraries, archives, and other memory institutions)
The meetings concluded with an open discussion, enabling all the participants to comment and share their impressions.
Figure2. Members of the Advisory Group were treated to Swiss fine dining
From One Librarian to Another: Ex Libris in Partnership with Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Ex Libris in partnership with Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Laura Salmi, Sales and Marketing Support for Ex Libris Italy
In recent years, one of the hottest topics in libraries all over the world is undoubtedly the integration of discovery tools. The expectation of users for a one-stop solution for the discovery and delivery of the complete spectrum of library resources through an attractive and user-friendly interface has become increasingly prevalent. But despite the many choices of technology offered by library automation and content vendors, it is Ex Libris Primo® that stands out as the winner, according to one member of the 900-strong Primo customer community, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. In a recent webinar for Italian librarians, the university explained its reasons for selecting Primo. A first of its kind for the Italian library community, the public webinar that followed Ca’ Foscari’s decision brought together dozens of Italian institutions to learn about Primo’s unique features.
The Ca’ Foscari University library holds about one million print items, around 20,000 e‑journals, 3,000 e‑books, and 40 bibliographic databases. The selection of a solution to enable all these materials to be searched simultaneously with accurate and insightful results was the culmination of an extensive evaluation of the solutions currently on the market.
Presented by Dr. Pierfranco Minsenti, project manager of the evaluation process, the webinar was managed by and for librarians. Dr. Minsenti shared his insights into discovery systems and opened up an arena for discussion and debate among the participants. Beginning with a description of the common functionality and added value of discovery tools, Dr. Minsenti analyzed the motivation for worldwide adoption of discovery tools. He then gave details of the selection process at Ca’ Foscari and the university’s reasons for choosing Primo.
The system’s flexibility in consortial support was one of the principal reasons that Ca’ Foscari and the University Iuav of Venice selected Primo for their shared search platform, according to Dr. Minsenti. Explaining the criteria that were taken into consideration during the market analysis, Dr. Minsenti noted the following: “The flexibility of the Primo user interface will allow us to combine Google-style ease of use with advanced filtering by both collection and type of material, while our ability to adjust Primo’s ranking algorithm guarantees greater visibility of local library materials.” The university also welcomed the portability of the A-Z list of electronic journals, which librarians can import from SFX into Primo Central. This portability is not offered by other discovery tools.
The comprehensive scope of the Primo Central Index was an important factor in the university’s decision: “Because Primo Central covers 97% of the peer-reviewed journals to which Ca’ Foscari subscribes, users will enjoy immediate access to vast numbers of journal articles,” explained Dr. Minsenti.
Pictured at the Bibliostar 2011 Conference, representatives of the Italian Primo sites (from left): Tiziana Onofri, Università di Macerata; Danileo Deana, BEIC Foundation; Liliana Morotti, general manager of Ex Libris Italy; Pierfranco Minsenti, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, and host of the webinar; Pierre Piccotti, IUAV Venezia; and Marianna Gemma Brenzoni, Università di Verona.
Among the other topics discussed in the webinar were the user’s ability to access library services directly within the search interface, a feature made possible by integrating Primo with the OPAC functionalities of the library’s Aleph® or other integrated library system; the unprecedented relevance of Primo’s result pages, thanks to its ScholarRank relevance-ranking technology; and users’ instant access to millions of electronic resources via the Primo Central Index. Webinar participants also discussed the value of enriching search results with article recommendations from the bX recommender service, which provides direct links to articles viewed by scholars whose interests are similar to those of the person who is searching.
The presentation was followed by a lively question-and-answer session moderated by Liliana Morotti, general manager of Ex Libris Italy.
The audience thoroughly appreciated this joint initiative by Ex Libris and the University of Ca’ Foscari and was particularly glad to have the opportunity to debate discovery tools and functionality in real time with colleagues from all over Italy in an open and informative forum.
News in Brief from Ex Libris Europe
News in Brief from Ex Libris Europe
Daniela Wittig, European Marketing Manager
Alma Days in Scandinavia
In December 2011, Ex Libris took the Alma next-generation library management service on a road show through Scandinavia. Alan Oliver (business development director for Europe), Axel Kaschte (strategy director for Europe), and Kristian Wallin (key account manager) spent three days introducing Ex Libris Alma to over 100 participants. The road show began on December 6 at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, with an audience of nearly 50 librarians. Then our team set off to Det Administrative Bibliotek (Denmark’s central library for government and the civil service) in Copenhagen, ending up on December 8 at the University of Helsinki.
As well as learning more about Alma, road show participants were treated to a live demonstration and enjoyed the opportunity to ask the Ex Libris panel a wide range of questions about the soon-to-be-launched system.
The Alma road show in Scandinavia was a huge success, and we were delighted to see so many customers and interested librarians at all three of the venues. We would like to extend our thanks once again to our hosts.
Frankfurt Book Fair
Jenny Walker presenting Primo Central at the Frankfurt Book Fair
It was a great pleasure to return to the Frankfurt Book Fair, one of the largest and best-known industry events, for five days in October 2011. One of the highlights of the fair was Jenny Walker’s presentation on Primo and the Primo Central Index, at the Hot Spot for Professional & Scientific Information. In addition, we were happy to meet such a large number of people at our booth, where the Ex Libris team was able to provide information about and demonstrate our entire range of library solutions. Visitors to our booth also experienced Primo and the Primo Central Index first hand.
Alma and Primo Day in Lyon
On December 1, 2011, Ex Libris hosted 33 participants for an Alma and Primo solution day at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon (ENS) in France. The event began with an introduction by Ms. Danielle Roger, head of the digital collections department at ENS, who described the library’s Primo® implementation project and gave an update on the progress. Ms. Roger explained how the Primo discovery and delivery solution and the institution’s other Ex Libris products—the Aleph® integrated library system; the SFX®, MetaLib®, and Verde® e-resource solutions; and the DigiTool® digital asset management system—have changed the library staff’s daily work and improved the user experience for students and faculty.
Maud Arnaud, sales consultant at Ex Libris France, presented the Alma next-generation library management service—the unified platform from Ex Libris for managing the full spectrum of library collections and operations. Participants also viewed a live demonstration of Alma.
The afternoon sessions focused on Primo and the Primo Central Index of scholarly e‑content. Provided by Ex Libris as a cloud service, the Primo Central index is a mega‑aggregate of hundreds of millions of scholarly e-resources of global and regional importance. Among these resources are journal articles, e-books, reviews, and legal documents, which are harvested from primary and secondary publishers and aggregators and from open-access repositories.
Mr. Laurent Aucher, from the Université Paris Est Créteil (UPEC), shared his library’s experiences in implementing Primo. In addition to asking about the library’s customization and data choices, the participants held an in-depth discussion about the management of e‑resources for which publishers do not provide data directly to Ex Libris. Mr. Aucher explained that Primo enables customers to easily harvest data from external sources with Microsoft Excel and XML formats and then incorporate such e-resources into Primo at the title level.
We would like to thank our hosts at ENS and Ms. Roger for her warm welcome. And, of course, we thank all those who participated in this successful solution day.
Online Information 2011
The Ex Libris stand enjoyed a busy time at the Online Information 2011 exhibition at the National Hall, Olympia (in London), at the end of November, bringing our participation in last year’s series of conferences and exhibitions to a highly successful close. We very much enjoyed seeing so many customers there. Our stand was especially popular with visitors who were keen to get some hands-on experience with Alma. The enthusiasm with which Alma was received provided an exciting wrap-up to 2011!
100th German Librarians’ Day in Berlin
The Ex Libris booth at the German Librarians' Days
Ex Libris was delighted to participate in the 2011 German Librarians’ Day conference and trade fair in Berlin and to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of this event. The meeting was a great success and, as usual, very well attended. We were excited to welcome so many visitors to our booth, many of whom came to learn more about Ex Libris Alma, the next-generation library management service. Developed in partnership with industry experts and four well-known institutions—members of the Alma development partner program—Alma has been designed to meet the challenges of cost-effective resource management while unifying library workflows to increase efficiency.
Among the highlights of the day was the presentation by Janet Lute, integrated library system coordinator at Princeton University Library, who flew in from the United States to speak to guests of Ex Libris about the reasons behind her library’s selection of Alma. We were also delighted to be joined by Prof. Dr. Stefan Gradmann of Humboldt University in Berlin, who hosted a discussion about linked open data and the future of libraries. In addition, Axel Kaschte, Ex Libris strategy director for Europe, gave a live demonstration of Alma.
Janet Lute explains the reasons for Princeton's selection of Alma
In addition to the excitement generated by Alma, the Primo discovery and delivery solution created a lot of buzz. Timm-Martin Siewert, an Ex Libris presales consultant, invited spectators to “meet Primo and discover your opportunities” in a presentation at the Ex Libris booth. This demonstration introduced people to just a few of the many exciting features available in Primo, such as maps showing where to find a certain book in the library and users’ ability to create a virtual bookshelf.
Finally, representatives from the Salzburg University Library, a member of the Austrian Library Network (OBVSG), joined Ex Libris staffers at our booth for the festive signing of an agreement for the library to purchase Primo and other Ex Libris products.
Representatives of Salzburg University Library and Ex Libris at the festive signing of their contract
We would like to thank all those who visited the Ex Libris booth at the German Librarians’ Day fair, and we look forward to seeing you in Hamburg in May 2012.
News in Brief from Ex Libris China
News in Brief from China
Fucheng Shen, General Manager of Ex Libris China
Seminar on Academic Resource Discovery and Launch of Shuimu Qinghua at Tsinghua University
Late in December 2011, over 80 librarians from 36 institutions gathered at Tsinghua University for a seminar exploring discovery solutions for academic content. The seminar also saw the launch of Tsinghua University’s Shuimu Qinghua (Discover More) search platform, powered by the Primo® discovery and delivery solution.
Following greetings from the University Library Director, Professor Deng Jingkang and from Matti Shem Tov, Ex Libris CEO and President, Shuimu Qinghua was officially launched. You can see it live at http://discovery.lib.tsinghua.edu.cn.
The remainder of the seminar focused on professional discussions about academic discovery. Prof. Zheng Qiaoying, deputy director of Shanghai Jiaotong University Library, presented best practices with Primo, based on the experience of Shanghai Jiaotong University—China’s first Primo site. Facilitated by a live demo of Shuimu Qinghua, Ms. Dou Tianfang, senior consultant on information services at Tsinghua University Library, discussed the lessons learned from exploring and practicing new library services supporting large volumes of academic resources.
Participants at the Tsinghua Discovery Seminar in December 2011
The 9th conference of the China Consortium of Ex Libris Users (CCEU) was held in Wuhan, China, in June 2011. Attending the conference were more than 130 delegates from 42 institutions, including libraries in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The group was also joined by Matti Shem Tov and Tamar Sadeh, director of marketing at Ex Libris.
The conference was a huge success, with a varied agenda that included an Ex Libris corporate update from Matti Shem Tov, customer presentations, a unified discovery update from Tamar Sadeh, and discussions about Primo and the Primo Central Index. Customers from many institutions, both in China and overseas, and including Emory University Library, John Hopkins University, Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, and the National Library of China, described their experiences and innovations with Ex Libris solutions.
Participants at the Chinese User Group Meeting in June 2011
China Union Cataloging System (UCS) Goes Live with Aleph
In July 2011, the Union Cataloging System (UCS) of China went live with the Aleph® integrated library system. Working in close collaboration with the National Library of China, which has been running Aleph since 2002, the UCS continuously synchronizes data from the two organizations. Currently, 30 different institutions across China contribute data to the UCS, and an additional 496 institutions regularly download data. These numbers are expected to rise dramatically in the near future.
During the past year of 2011, 30 institutions uploaded 541,205 new bib records and 13,498,167 holdings records, and 496 institutions downloaded 3,825,082 bib records. The UCS contains a total of 8,126,017 bib records and 22,113,600 holdings records.
Southeast Asia in the Spotlight
Southeast Asia in the Spotlight
Jason Tan, Sales Director, Ex Libris Southeast Asia
Youngest of the Ex Libris global regions, Southeast Asia (SEA) has seen steady growth since its establishment in 2008. This region comprises Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, together with Hong Kong and Taiwan—which, although they fall outside Southeast Asia in geographic terms, are managed by the same Ex Libris staff. In Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam, the Ex Libris team is supported by energetic, dedicated distributors.
Libraries in the SEA region are at very different stages of technical and professional development. Singapore, for example, is characterized by a technologically advanced library landscape, whereas the library automation industry in Vietnam has only recently begun to gain momentum. A large spectrum of technical variation can be seen among our customer community.
Our distributors constitute a major factor in the success of Ex Libris in the SEA region. In addition to delivering the full suite of services in their local languages, the distributors play an important role in bridging cultural gaps between Ex Libris and customers. In short, the SEA distributors are indispensable members of the Ex Libris family!
Languages and character sets differ from one SEA market to another. We constantly encounter new challenges in how to display Thai, Vietnamese, and Chinese characters and how to enable users of these languages to search Ex Libris systems. With the support of distributors and product management teams, Ex Libris has succeeded in making its solutions effective in SEA languages and has brought the solutions into a position of market leadership in the region.
In Taiwan, we have continued to sign new contracts for the Aleph® integrated library system. In addition, Taiwanese institutions are showing strong interest in the Primo® discovery and delivery solution and the Primo Central Index. Indeed, in recent weeks the nationally important University System of Taiwan (UST) selected Primo for its four member institutions. UST is a consortia of the four outstanding research-oriented universities in Taiwan, National Central University, National Chiao Tung University, National Tsing Hua University, and National Yang-Ming University.
A number of Thai government agencies have acquired Aleph, and Chulalongkorn University, the leading university in Thailand, has recently purchased Primo.
Vietnam National University—Ho Chi Minh City has run a suite of Ex Libris solutions comprising Aleph, Primo, and SFX® since 2010. More recently, the National Agency for Science and Technology Information was the first customer in Vietnam to acquire the Rosetta digital preservation solution, Primo, Primo Central, and the bX recommender service.
One year ago, Ex Libris had two customers in Hong Kong, and today there are six, in a market previously dominated by Innovative Interfaces. We recently welcomed the Hong Kong Polytechnic University to the Ex Libris community, following the university’s selection of Primo, the Primo Central Index, MetaLib®, and SFX to replace Innovative’s Encore, ResearchPro, and WebBridge.
The SEA team is continuing to explore other avenues in the region and hopes to achieve success in both new and existing markets in the coming years.
Libraries Sharing Services: UKSG Conferences
Libraries Sharing Services: UKSG Conferences
Tracy Gardner, UKSG Marketing Associate
In November 2011, more than 100 people attended the UKSG one-day conference on shared services. This thought-provoking event helped participants understand what shared services will mean for libraries in the future. A concept that is increasingly talked about in the scholarly communications sector, shared services encompasses trends such as centralized, or consortial, procurement (for example, the NESLi2 licensing initiative) and collaborative cataloging (such as Ex Libris Alma’s Community Zone).
Shared services are usually developed to improve quality, streamline functions, and save money. With severe funding cuts beginning to take effect in the UK’s higher education sector, organizations such as SCONUL (Society of College, National and University Libraries), the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), and JISC, as well as individual universities and libraries, are looking into the implementation of shared services to achieve new cost savings. Publishers and technology companies are also experimenting with novel collaborative approaches to business challenges.
Chaired by independent consultant David Sommer, the one-day conference looked at lessons learned from past collaborative efforts, both within and outside the scholarly communications sector; explored the likely impact of current ventures; and discussed how all stakeholders in the scholarly information supply chain can work together and make better use of shared services to enhance productivity in the future.
After David Sommer’s opening remarks, speakers discussed a variety of topics:
Ken Chad, networked information consultant, spoke about the pressure points that shared services can relieve in scholarly communications (both locally and globally); the main issues that drive the implementation of shared services; and the need for the sustainability of projects.
Anne Bell, university librarian at the University of Warwick and chair of the SCONUL Shared Services Steering Group, together with Liam Earney, head of licensing at JISC Collections, described new HEFCE- and JISC-sponsored shared services for electronic resource management.
Colin Cram, procurement consultant, gave a presentation on the history of shared services and lessons that can be learned from other sectors.
Kristiina Hormia-Poutanen, Finland’s deputy national librarian, detailed the progress of various shared services within the EU.
Marc van den Berg, director of library and IT services at Tilburg University, talked about enabling staff members and structures to change when new networked services are introduced.
Mike Taylor, principal investigator at Elsevier Labs, discussed collaborative science, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) project, and ways in which publishers might best pursue shared services in the future.
The day ended with a constructive question-and-answer session that enticed everyone to continue the discussions over drinks.
Many exciting topics are lined up for the UKSG Annual Conference, to be held in Glasgow on March 26-28, 2012. Registration for the conference will open in January 2012. The conference has become the largest of its kind in Europe and is an essential event for both senior decision makers and those still developing their professional knowledge.
Jon Purcell, Library Director at Durham University, had this to say about last year’s annual conference:
"The UKSG Annual Conference has a real buzz - it is *the* place to hear about emerging trends and challenges in the information community. It's a conference where different stakeholders get together to develop new ideas from positive and fruitful interactions. As a Library Director it gives me important new insights, but I can also highly recommend the conference to staff managing e-resources, procurement, and institutional repositories, for professional development, for contacts, and for inspiration in the coming year."
Haifa 2011: Sixth IGeLU Conference and Eleventh Ex Libris Systems Seminar
Haifa 2011: Sixth IGeLU Conference and Eleventh Ex Libris Systems Seminar
Karina Koch, Corporate Marketing Communications
The 2011 International Group of Ex Libris Users (IGeLU) conference and Ex Libris Systems Seminar took place back to back in September, at the spectacular campus of Israel’s University of Haifa, located on Mount Carmel and overlooking the glittering shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
The University of Haifa, a large liberal arts university with a strong research tradition, serves a varied, multicultural student body. Over 17,000 students from Israel’s Jewish, Arab, and Druze communities, as well as numerous international students, are enrolled in the university’s undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral programs. The Haifa University library team, headed by Naomi Greidinger, worked tirelessly during the planning stage and throughout the events themselves. IGeLU and Ex Libris are both extremely grateful for the Haifa team’s invaluable contribution to the success of the two events.
With the IGeLU conference and Systems Seminar taking place under one roof (well, under the bright blue sky), participants had a perfect opportunity to combine networking, professional development, and hands-on training in Ex Libris products. Over 180 of the 433 participants, who hailed from 36 countries, stayed for both events, a fact that demonstrates the value, particularly in such budget-conscious times, of holding the two events together.
Members of IGeLU’s steering committee and product working groups convened over the weekend for preconference discussions and for meetings with the representatives of the National User Groups and Ex Libris management. On the first day of the conference, an opening reception was held in the evening at an outdoor restaurant on the Haifa beachfront. The generous bar, delicious food, and wonderful atmosphere made this gathering a great prelude to the five days of intensive learning that followed.
We were honored to welcome Marshall Breeding, director for innovative technology and research at Vanderbilt University and editor of Library Technology Guides, as the opening keynote speaker at IGeLU. Highlights of the conference program included plenary updates on Alma, Primo, and Primo Central; live Alma demonstrations; and the ask-the-management Q&A session (chaired by IGeLU’s resident stand-up comedian, Peter Klien). In addition to the plenary meetings, participants were treated to a choice of 56 sessions, which were held in the university’s Pompidou Center-style arts building. The conference ended with a provocative keynote lecture by Professor Sheizaf Rafaeli, head of the Graduate School of Management at the University of Haifa, who reflected on the future economics of publishing, libraries, reading, and writing.
Presentations from the IGeLU conference are available on the IGeLU web site.
Bringing together the participants of both the IGeLU conference and the Systems Seminar, an elegant gala dinner on the evening between the two events featured Peter Klien, who offered a satirical look at libraries, and the now traditional song for IGeLU, “One—A Tribute to Discovery,” by Mark Dehmlow and Lukas Koster.
The 2½-day Systems Seminar opened with a plenary session and two very different keynote lectures. Robert Walton, CEO of the Claremont University Consortium, described the consortium’s ongoing commitment to modernization in the face of considerable challenges; and A. B. Yehoshua, the renowned Israeli author and essayist, gave a scintillating talk on the nature of literature.
Seven tracks, 40 presenters, one soccer match (won by Ex Libris, 1-0—better luck next time!) and 60 sessions later, the seminar concluded with a relaxing dinner in the canopied garden of the Dan Carmel hotel.
Yael Shalev, Ex Libris training expert, captured some special moments from the seminar on video.
With Haifa and Jerusalem only 160 kilometers apart, many members of the Ex Libris development, support, and product-management teams were able to attend the sessions and to meet with customers throughout the IGeLU conference and the seminar. It was gratifying to both customers and Ex Libris staff to have this opportunity to discuss many important topics related to Ex Libris products.
See You in Zurich!
Time flies when you’re having fun, and IGeLU is now busy planning the next annual meeting, which will take place September 11-13, 2012, in Switzerland. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich(ETH Zurich) has generously offered to host the conference.
IGeLU News in Brief from Haifa
Pat Busby (University of Cape Town) has decided to step down from the IGeLU steering committee. Pat did a great job planning the conferences and serving as a liaison with the National User Groups.
Peter Klien (Austrian Library Network), well-known moderator of the famous Q&A sessions, was elected to the IGeLU steering committee. Peter will also continue as coordinator of the special interest working group for consortia.
Michael Fake (London School of Economics) was reelected to the steering committee.
Ray Delahunty (University of the Arts in London) succeeds Habib Tabatabai (University of Central Oklahoma) as coordinator of the Voyager product working group. Among Habib’s accomplishments was his role in helping Voyager customers successfully integrate in IGeLU. Many thanks to Habib, whose continued involvement in IGeLU is wished by all.
A decision was made to merge the Primo and MetaLib product working groups. Coordinators Jeremy Acland (Queen Mary, University of London) and Mandy Stewart (British Library) have begun working out the details. The two groups will meet in March 2012 in Zurich to discuss the organization of the merged group.
The Ex Libris (white) and Customer (blue) football teams - it's the taking part that counts
Technical Seminar 2012
Technical Seminar 2012
It's that time of year again! Ex Libris North America is gearing up for the 2012 Technical Seminar. Following a record-breaking attendance in Milwaukee last summer, this year’s conference is heading to beautiful Salt Lake City.
Join us this May 6-8 at the Hilton Salt Lake City Center for world-class training, product certifications, networking with other users and more. Registration opens soon.
Welcome to the fifteenth issue of the Ex Librian newsletter. This issue focuses on the way in which scholarly usage data improves the research experience of our users. I believe that Ex Libris offers unique expertise in this area, with the company’s extensive experience in gathering usage data and developing new services that leverage such data.
All of us are aware of how usage data enables the providers of information, primarily Web search engines, to better address our information needs. A few years ago, Ex Libris set out to achieve the same goal in the scholarly arena—first, by means of our bX article recommender service: SFX logs contributed by hundreds of libraries around the world are gathered into a repository (the bX database), and the data from the logs is mined and analyzed to generate usage-based recommendations. The bX service has proven to be extremely helpful to millions of researchers, because the recommendations establish associations between items on the basis of selections made by fellow researchers rather than on the basis of query terms and textual clues.
However, the creation of recommendations was only the first step. Usage data enables us to better address researchers’ needs in various ways. For example, to assess a scholarly item’s significance, the system can use the number of times that researchers select the item, along with the item’s number of citations and a measure of the impact of the journal in which the item was published. With today’s rapid flow of information and the growing variety of material types and publishing practices, usage analysis has become a timely and appropriate assessment method. The combined measure, representing both usage data and citations, is implemented in the Primo relevance-ranking technology and helps Primo display the most relevant items at the top of result lists.
Usage data is also at the core of the new Hot Articles service, which highlights the articles in which researchers are currently showing the most interest. Planned for general release in early 2012, the service will be available free of charge for integration in any noncommercial Web site. More usage-based reports will be introduced in our resource-discovery solutions in 2012.
All this is only the beginning. Business intelligence is at the heart of the Alma library management service. With usage data from Alma, librarians will be able to make more informed decisions, optimize the use of their library resources, and provide their community with a high-quality, cost-effective research environment that is targeted to their community’s needs.
As we embark on 2012, I wish you all a year of peace, productivity, and fulfillment.
