NOVA School of Business & Economics (NOVA SBE) Teresa and Alexandre Soares dos Santos Library will be the first academic institution in Portugal to adopt the FOLIO Library Services Platform (LSP). EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) will provide implementation, hosting, support, maintenance, and other value-added integration services via EBSCO FOLIO, with completion planned before 2025.
FOLIO will be a part of a larger framework of digital transformation projects that NOVA SBE will implement to honor the library’s commitment to continuous innovation. NOVA SBE Library's mission and vision prioritizes a user-centered approach, strengthening the library-user bond and increasing the number of people who use its collections and bibliographic services.
As an EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS), Full Text Finder, and OpenAthens customer, NOVA SBE can expect seamless integration between their preferred discovery and authentication tools and the FOLIO LSP, maximizing user functionality.
NOVA SBE Library Director, Dr. Susana Lopes, explains the reasoning behind their library’s selection of the open LSP. “The decision to replace the current integrated library services (ILS) platform was supported by an in-depth analysis process that carefully considered the needs of the user community, trends emerging technologies, the library team's workflow and the integration, pre-existing to the migration process, with different EBSCO solutions such as EDS, Full Text finder and OpenAthens. The increased investment in the acquisition of electronic resources and the need to guarantee their discovery and use by users drove this need for change. The new library projects in the development phase are aligned with the issues of discovery, linked data and data enrichment, assumptions that go beyond FOLIO but are fully aligned with the possibilities of open source.”
EBSCO Information Services Senior Implementation Consultant Lola Stelle says NOVA SBE’s willingness to revolutionize its library practices will improve its library workflows and better serve its users. “It is a pleasure to work with the NOVA SBE Library team. They are innovative and eager to modernize their cataloging, acquisitions, electronic resource management, and discovery practices. Librarians are making significant changes to their existing workflows to make their work more efficient and provide students and faculty with a more streamlined library experience.”
The transition to FOLIO will enable unified management of print and digital library collections, greater interoperability, extensibility, flexibility, and innovative capacity that goes beyond the library domain, and the genesis to provide evidence-based data from a visually dynamic analytical library that assists in interdepartmental connections beyond the library domain. But it was, above all, the human team that integrates these services, made up of implementation consultants, software engineers, developers, product managers, etc., that reinforced the confidence of the NOVA SBE library team for this change.
EBSCO Information Services Director of SaaS Innovation and Sales Latin Europe & Israel Bernardo Pinheiro says, “NOVA SBE's adoption of FOLIO means an important step towards innovation, which opens a world of possibilities. Thanks to modern technology, designed not only for current needs but also for those of the future, FOLIO is an LSP that allows a level of customization and interoperability never seen before. We are very happy to work with NOVA SBE on this project and excited about the future.”
About NOVA SBE
NOVA SBE, integrated into Universidade Nova de Lisboa (one of the most renowned universities in Portugal), is a leading school in the areas of Economics, Finance and Management through its undergraduate, master's, doctoral, MBA and Education Programs for Executives. NOVA SBE is on the list of the 30 best schools in Europe with around 3,000 students from more than 70 different countries.
About EBSCO Information Services
EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) is a leading provider of online research content and search technologies serving academic, school and public libraries; healthcare and medical institutions; corporations; and government agencies around the world. From research, acquisition management, subscription services and discovery to clinical decision support and patient care, learning, and research and development, EBSCO provides institutions with access to content and resources to serve the information and workflow needs of their users and organizations. For more information, visit the EBSCO website at: www.ebsco.com.
