ProQuest’s Sanford Passes Baton to Shem Tov
ANN ARBOR, MI, May 23, 2017 – Matti Shem Tov, President of Ex Libris, a ProQuest company, will succeed Kurt Sanford as CEO of ProQuest in 2017. ProQuest’s success under Mr. Sanford’s direction and the development of a strong leadership team set the stage for Mr. Shem Tov to continue to drive ProQuest’s growth and innovation, bringing together the value of content, books and software to enable extraordinary outcomes for libraries, researchers and students.
“Over the past six years, I’ve focused on helping customers and users tackle their most important goals by assembling and structuring ProQuest’s assets to best serve them,” said Mr. Sanford. “Today, we have the right strategy and the right team in place for ProQuest to move to the next level in delivering on our mission of better research, better learning and better insights, enabling people to change their world.”
“I’m honored and eager to lead the company forward, building on Kurt’s impressive legacy,” said Mr. Shem Tov. “The future now calls for ProQuest to focus on accelerating our responsiveness to emerging needs, helping our customers and users quickly adapt and succeed in dynamic environments.”
Mr. Shem Tov has led Ex Libris since 2003, building its prominence as a technology provider for academic, national and research libraries worldwide. Among his many achievements is the successful transition from locally deployed solutions to cloud-based services, including the creation of the Alma library management service. Under his leadership, Ex Libris’ customer base has grown to more than 7,000 institutions in 82 countries, and he led the successful integration of ProQuest Workflow Solutions into Ex Libris when the companies came together in 2015.
Bar Veinstein, Ex Libris Corporate Vice President, Resource Management Solutions, will succeed Mr. Shem Tov as President of Ex Libris, ensuring stability and continuing growth as Ex Libris defines and designs resources that enable academic, research and national libraries to transition into the future. A seven-year veteran of the company, Mr. Veinstein will guide further development and expansion of the renowned Alma library management system and Ex Libris’ discovery solutions as well as the development of new innovative solutions such as Leganto and CampusM.
Mr. Sanford has led ProQuest since 2011, overseeing a period that has enriched customer and user services with dramatic growth and an expansion into e and print books as well as digital video and both content and function advancements to the company’s world class journal, news and dissertation resources. As CEO, Mr. Sanford guided ProQuest’s offering of services from industry leaders such as EBL-Ebook Library, Pi2, Coutts Information Service, Ex Libris and Alexander Street. ProQuest users gained productivity through simplified workflows as Mr. Sanford focused ProQuest on converging platforms and established state-of-the-art management systems and infrastructure. The CEO role will transition over the third quarter, and he will remain with ProQuest through the end of 2017.
“I’m one of the thousands at ProQuest who are grateful for the tremendous contributions Kurt has made to the growth and development of this company. The foundation he built enables Matti to lead ProQuest into its next chapter, continuously improving the value and ease of use of ProQuest’s offerings and delivering the very best customer experience in the market,” said Andy Snyder, ProQuest Chairman and CEO of Cambridge Information Group, ProQuest’s parent company. “We’re seizing an opportunity to create an even stronger, more agile company at the forefront of emerging customer needs.”
Read more in this blog post from Mr. Sanford and Mr. Shem Tov.
About Ex Libris
Ex Libris, a ProQuest company, is a leading global provider of cloud-based solutions for higher education. Offering SaaS solutions for the management and discovery of the full spectrum of library and scholarly materials, as well as mobile campus solutions driving student engagement and success, Ex Libris serves thousands of customers in 90 countries. For more information about Ex Libris, see our website, and join us on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
About ProQuest (http://www.proquest.com)
ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company’s products are a gateway to the world’s knowledge including dissertations, governmental and cultural archives, news, historical collections and ebooks. ProQuest technologies serve users across the critical points in research, helping them discover, access, share, create and manage information.
The company's cloud-based technologies offer flexible solutions for librarians, students and researchers through the ProQuest®, Alexander Street™, Bowker®, Dialog®, Ex Libris® and SIPX® businesses – and notable research tools such as the RefWorks® citation and reference management platform, the Pivot® research development tool and the Ebook Central®, ebrary®, EBL™ and MyiLibrary® ebook platforms. The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with offices around the world.