IPSWICH, Mass. — September 27, 2012 — Northern Caribbean University in Jamaica has selected EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) from EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) to provide an easy to use and powerful discovery tool that will search its entire collection. The discovery solution from EBSCO will be known as SmartQuest and will be used to search all of the University’s databases as well as the library’s catalog.
During the evaluation of EBSCO Discovery Service, Northern Caribbean University library realized that EDS provided exactly what librarians were looking for to broaden their library. Northern Caribbean University’s Systems Librarian, Talitio Russell says that they wanted SmartQuest to be a single, easy to use, customizable platform to retrieve catalogue items. “EDS offers our users exactly what our library needs: a single search for discovery of our entire collection and features to heighten the research experience, providing everything our user’s need in one place.”
Feedback received from faculty and students during the evaluation process was instrumental in the decision making process. Librarians say that the feedback helped push the library in a new direction – to implement a one-stop “discovery” system. Russell says, “we received positive feedback from users regarding the ease of which EDS can be searched. Its user-friendliness was a big factor in our decision to choose EDS.”
In addition to naming the discovery solution SmartQuest, Northern Caribbean University has also incorporated other custom branding features into EDS including customizing the page with school colors and banners. With EDS, institutions can also create custom pages for individual departments or subject-specific research.
As the library continues to use EBSCO Discovery Service Russell hopes that database usage will continue to increase. “We are already seeing an improvement in database usage since we implemented EDS. We have a good relationship with EBSCO and are very pleased with the results EDS has provided so far and hope it continues.”
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 metadata and depth and breadth of coverage.
The Base Index for EBSCO Discovery Service forms the foundation upon which each EDS subscribing library builds out its custom collection. Beginning with the Base Index, each institution extends the reach of EDS by adding appropriate resources including its catalog, institutional repositories, EBSCOhost and other databases, and additional content sources to which it subscribes. It is this combination that allows a single, comprehensive, custom solution for discovering the value of any library’s collection.
The EDS Base Index is comprised of metadata from the world’s foremost information providers. At present, the EDS Base Index represents content from approximately 20,000 providers in addition to metadata from another 70,000 book publishers. Although constantly growing, today the EDS Base Index provides metadata for more than 64,000 magazines & journals, 825,000 CDs & DVDs, nearly six million books, more than 320 million newspaper articles, approximately 400,000 conference proceedings and hundreds of thousands of additional information sources from various source-types.
About EBSCO Publishing
EBSCO Publishing is the producer of 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. The company provides more than 350 databases and nearly 300,000 e-books. 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 (www.ebscohost.com/discovery). For more information, visit the EBSCO Publishing Web site at: www.ebscohost.com, or contact: information@ebscohost.com. EBSCO Publishing is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., one of the largest privately held companies in the United States.
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For more information, please contact:
Kathleen McEvoy
Public Relations Director
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebscohost.com
