The Award-Winning Library of the University of Konstanz Adopts Serials Solutions’ Summon™ Service, 360 Link and 360 Counter
Oct. 22, 2010 – SEATTLE & KONSTANZ, Germany – Serials Solutions, a business unit of ProQuest LLC, announced today that the Library of the University of Konstanz has chosen to adopt the Summon™ web-scale discovery service, 360 Link and 360 Counter. The Library of the University of Konstanz, which serves the public as well 10,000 students, is home to more than 2 million books, journals, electronic resources, magazines, DVDs and CDs, and is the first German library to adopt all three of these services.
“We are pleased that one of Germany’s most prestigious and forward-thinking academic and research libraries has selected Summon, 360 Link and 360 Counter to improve access to material in its library collection,” said Michael Gersch, senior vice president and general manager, Serials Solutions. “Awarded the prestigious ‘Library of the Year 2010’ by the German Library Association (dbv) and the foundation ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin and Gerd Bucerius, the Library of the University of Konstanz is committed to providing its students, faculty, staff and alumni with the best research and discovery tools.”
After a rigorous examination of various discovery services and deliberation over the merits of other services such as OPAC 2.0, the Library chose the Summon™ service as the best solution to provide users the ability to do research from a single search box. The solution will be further augmented with 360 Link, an OpenURL link resolver service, providing patrons with the most accurate, up-to-date results when searching for specific full-text items in databases and journals; and 360 Counter to guide librarians in assessing usage of collections, justifying expenditures and optimizing purchases.
“As we continue to strive for excellence in meeting the needs of our patrons, we want tools that are intuitive and easy for them to use,” said Petra Haetscher, director of the Library of the University of Konstanz. “At the same time, the accuracy and the quality of research results are also critical. Our goal was a discovery service that is simple and fast, like Google, but which can find scholarly books and articles in a supremely focused way. Summon and 360 Link were the clear-cut choices. We are confident 360 Counter will help our library run more efficiently by allowing us to make better decisions about the content to which we need to subscribe as well as the service level we provide.”
With the implementation of the Summon™ service and 360 Link, patrons will be able to find library resources unassisted. With the Summon™ service, the full breadth of the library material is included in one centralized index. This includes print items from the catalog, items in institutional repositories, licensed electronic content such as ejournal articles, dissertations, newspaper articles and much more. The simple search function and the numerous facets to winnow results will help save patrons’ time, effort and frustration. This will allow librarians to focus their attention on information literacy and other areas of library management.
As libraries look for ways to control costs, 360 Counter can help librarians assess which resources to keep and which resources to cut based on usage. 360 Counter provides librarians with the ability to take their complex usage data and create pre-filtered reports. These reports provide better visibility and insight into how collections are being accessed and used, including the top 100 collection titles receiving the heaviest usage and those that are the most expensive.
The Konstanz Library prides itself on its willingness to experiment in leading-edge library services, and consistently ranks as one of the top universities in Germany. Like many German libraries, it employs Libero Integrated Library System (ILS). While originally utilizing Ex Libris’ SFX as a link resolver, the Library opted to replace it with 360 Link, preferring a Software as a Service (SaaS) link resolver fuelled by the same knowledge base as the Summon™ service, saving significant time, resources and effort. The SaaS model means that the Library can deploy the service within hours instead of weeks or months, and it will automatically benefit from new service enhancements. Additionally, the Library is implementing a DSPACE local repository, which will be indexed by Summon as well.
About Library of the University of Konstanz
The University of Konstanz Library is the central facility for the provision of literature and information services at the University of Konstanz, which is one of the nine German Universities of Excellence. The entire collection of print media, numbering well over 2 million items, is laid out in a space of 25,000 square meters, each item available 24 hours a day without prior reservation, and which can be used in any one of over 1,000 workspaces within the library. In recent years the library has invested heavily in the development of services for end users, information literacy, and has additionally invested in further electronic collections and the development of Open Access. The decision to purchase the Summon™ service is designed to improve the discoverability, visibility and usability of these print and electronic materials.
About Serials Solutions
Founded by a librarian for librarians in 2000, Serials Solutions® is the global leader in E-Resource Access and Management Services (ERAMS) that serves more than 3,000 libraries of all sizes and types. Serials Solutions’ comprehensive suite of discovery tools and management services helps improve access to and use of collections, eases librarian workloads and ultimately reduces operating costs. Solutions include: 360, the only complete and integrated e-resource access and management solution; KnowledgeWorks, the authoritative e-resource knowledgebase and foundation for Serials Solutions 360; Ulrich’s, the world’s most authoritative source of bibliographic and publisher information for serials and the most comprehensive source of print and electronic serials data available; AquaBrowser®, a discovery layer that makes navigation more accessible; and most recently the Summon™ web-scale discovery service, a world-class tool that provides instant access to the full breadth of the library’s collection through a single search.
For more information, please visit http://www.serialssolutions.com or call 1 (206) 545-9056. Serials Solutions is a business unit of ProQuest LLC.