Birmingham, Ala. — May 22, 2013 —EBSCO Industries, Inc. announces the EBSCO Information Services (EIS) and EBSCO Publishing (EP) businesses will merge on July 1, 2013 and will operate as a single business under the name EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO). Tim Collins, a 26-year EBSCO veteran and previously President of EBSCO Publishing, will serve as President of the combined entity.
Dixon Brooke, EBSCO Industries, Inc. CEO commented, “While the two businesses have worked closely together for the past three decades, they have been pulled even closer together in recent years due to our customers’ desire for more integrated solutions. For example, we are in the process of integrating our popular A-to-Z with LinkSource service, previously operated by EIS, with our industry leading EBSCOhost and EBSCO Discovery Service solutions, operated by EP, for the benefit of librarians and their end users. We believe this merger of divisions will bring many future tangible benefits to our customers.”
Allen Powell, President of the subscription services division of EIS, who will now report to Collins, shared: “Our customers realize that the subscription service business is much more than just processing an order and sending it to a publisher. It is about improving the end users’ experience by maximizing discovery and access, while at the same time reducing our customers’ internal administrative costs. We are excited about this merger, as it facilitates more comprehensive integration of EBSCO’s many access and management tools which we are confident will benefit our customers.” All of EBSCO’s subscription services offices and operations will continue to report to Powell, who has worked for EBSCO for 22 years.
EBSCO continues to grow through increased market share and a constantly expanding suite of products and services. By combining the businesses, the company is emphasizing the importance of tight integration of products and services in order to heighten the overall value and benefit for customers and end users. For example, later this year, EBSCO will be releasing Full Text Finder™, the replacement to its existing A-to-Z with LinkSource product. While Full Text Finder will continue to be available as a standalone product, it will also be fully integrated into EBSCO’s popular EBSCOhost® and EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) product line. As Full Text Finder will be a component of EDS, customers will receive Full Text Finder at no additional charge.
All EBSCOhost customers will be able to manage their holdings via EBSCOadmin’s management module. This same module will be used by Full Text Finder to drive its publication browse and link resolver functionality as well as the full text limiter for EBSCOhost and EDS. Customers who buy their e-journals and e-packages from EBSCO will have the information regarding these purchases automatically populated into the EBSCOadmin holdings module, eliminating administrative time and insuring that users have seamless access to the content. Articles in e-journals and e-packages purchased via EBSCO will automatically be accessible via a single click from EBSCOhost databases and EDS via EBSCO’s industry leadingSmartLinks™ technology.
“The initial integration highlights mentioned above are examples of how we expect this merger to better position us to provide comprehensive offerings to our customers,” commented Tim Collins. “The business will operate under the EBSCO Information Services name as this better describes our overall activities than the name EBSCO Publishing. However, we know that most of our customers know us and refer to us simply as ‘EBSCO’ and this is fine with us. We are still the same company our customers have worked with for more than seventy years.”
About EBSCO Information Services
EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) is the leading provider of resources for libraries worldwide including EBSCONET®, EBSCO’s total e-resource management system, and EBSCOhost®, the world's premier for-fee online research service, including full-text databases, subject indexes, point-of-care medical reference, historical digital archives and e-books. EBSCO provides more than 375 research databases and more than 380,000 e-books plus subscription management services for 355,000 e-journals and e-journal packages. Through a library of tens of thousands of full-text journals and magazines from renowned publishers, EBSCO serves the content needs of all researchers (Academic, Medical, K-12, Public Library, Corporate, Government, etc.). EBSCO is also the provider of EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS), which provides each institution with a fast, single search box for its entire collection, offering deeper indexing and more full-text searching of journals and magazines than any other discovery service. For more information, visit the EBSCO website at: www.ebsco.com. EBSCO is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., one of the largest privately held companies in the United States.
###
For more information, please contact:
Kathleen McEvoy
Public Relations Director
EBSCO Information Services
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebsco.com
