IPSWICH, Mass. — February 12, 2015 — Universidade do Porto, the largest university in Portugal, has found great success with the implementation of EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) from EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO). The university purchased EDS in 2011 after looking at several different services.
The university library found that EDS offered the best features and functionality including usability, easy integration of library resources and mobile accessibility. Every year since implementation, the library has reported increased usage and greater exposure to library resources as well as positive feedback from students and faculty.
While evaluating discovery services, one of the top priorities for the university was to find a tool to promote its library resources and allow users to explore the resources with ease. According to Tiago Fernandes, Universidade do Porto Library System Administrator, EDS was the perfect solution. “The integration of all the library catalogs and institutional repository was a great asset to the selection of EDS. EDS increases the visibility of information and documentation services and allows an integrated search.”
Providing a service that was easily accessible was also a priority for the library. Fernandes says with EDS they can reach all of their students and staff even with on-the-go searching. “With EBSCO Discovery Service the U.PORTO community has access to electronic resources 24 hours a day anywhere in the world, due to its integration with the UP federated authentication, dispensing the use of Virtual Private Network to access the full-text and allowing access to a personal area for each user to manage his searches and preferences. EDS also allowed the arrival of UP electronic resources to the world of tablets and smartphones, thus covering all kinds of devices for research and information retrieval.”
Since its implementation three years ago, EDS has grown in popularity around campus and the library has seen a continuous increase in usage statistics. “The U.PORTO community have given excellent feedback. They say the interface is very friendly, the search is very fast and the search results are very good. EDS usage statistics have shown that betting on this solution was the right one."
EBSCO Discovery Service creates a unified, customized index of an institution’s information resources, and an easy, yet powerful means of accessing all of that content from a single search box-searching made even more powerful because of the quality of its relevance and value ranking technology.
About EBSCO Information Services
EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) is the leading discovery service provider for libraries worldwide with more than 6,000 discovery customers in over 100 countries. EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) provides each institution with a comprehensive, single search box for its entire collection, offering unparalleled relevance ranking quality and extensive customization. EBSCO is also the preeminent provider of online research content for libraries, including hundreds of research databases, historical archives, point-of-care medical reference, and corporate learning tools serving millions of end users at tens of thousands of institutions. EBSCO is the leading provider of electronic journals & books for libraries, with subscription management for more than 360,000 serials, including more than 57,000 e-journals, as well as online access to more than 650,000 e-books. For more information, visit the EBSCO website at: www.ebsco.com. EBSCO Information Services is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., a family owned company since 1944.
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For more information, please contact:
Kathleen McEvoy
Vice President of Communications
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebsco.com
