Ebook Central® Platform Enhances Discovery via the Syndetics Unbound™ Service
ANN ARBOR, MI, March 5, 2018 – Libraries who choose the Academic Complete® subscription, ProQuest’s flagship ebook resource trusted by libraries worldwide, can now provide an enhanced user experience for their patrons in the Ebook Central® platform, thanks to a new integration with the Syndetics Unbound™ service.
Syndetics Unbound is an enrichment service that integrates with a library’s catalog or discovery layer, adding up to 16 interactive elements designed to encourage exploration and increase circulation. ProQuest has integrated the Syndetics Unbound service’s most popular enrichment elements into the Ebook Central platform – an added value that helps connect students and researchers to relevant resources they may not have otherwise discovered.
These elements, which draw from ProQuest and LibraryThing data are now available for students and researchers to view on the Ebook Central “book detail” page, which provides real-time availability and key bibliographic information for ebooks in a library’s holdings. They include:
- "You May Also Like”: On-the-spot recommendations based on a library’s holdings
- Reader reviews: More than 1.5 million vetted reader reviews from LibraryThing
- About the Author: Additional author information, including photograph and biography
- Awards: Honors a book has received; also helps patrons find other highly awarded titles in their library’s collection
- Tags: An easy way to explore related content tagged with genres, subjects and other categories
“Our library will launch Syndetics Unbound as part of our new Primo UI implementation to enrich our catalog and improve its usability. The reaction from librarians and patrons has been positive as users discover similar materials in both the catalog and our main ebook platforms,” said Allen Jones, Director Digital Library and Technical Services at The New School. “We’re thrilled that the integration with Ebook Central makes discoverability even easier for our patrons. Whether they are searching Academic Complete or the library’s catalog, serendipitous browsing is the same user experience.”
“ProQuest conducted a survey of students and researchers in 2016, and three-quarters of respondents said book information pages are extremely or very important – while nearly half said the same of reviews, ratings and personalized recommendations,” said Kathy Masnik, Vice President, Product Management, ProQuest Books. “The integration of Syndetics Unbound with Ebook Central addresses both of these needs, helping our users discover and access the content that’s important to them.”
Syndetics Unbound enrichment elements will release on Ebook Central this month to Academic Complete customers. Those who subscribe to Syndetics Unbound for their catalog or discovery layer will also get the functionality for any ebooks acquired through Ebook Central.
About Academic Complete
The Academic Complete® collection is ProQuest’s flagship ebook subscription, providing 150,000 multi-disciplinary ebooks to libraries around the globe. Delivered on the Ebook Central platform, it provides unlimited multi-user access, powerful research tools and DRM-free chapter downloads. More university presses contribute to Academic Complete than any other subscription, and in the next few years it will be the only subscription to carry more than 14,000 high-demand, high use Wiley titles. Academic Complete also includes a Book Display Widget for promoting titles on any website.
About ProQuest (http://www.proquest.com)
ProQuest is committed to supporting the important work happening in the world’s research and learning communities. The company curates content that matters to the advancement of knowledge, assembling an archive of billions of vetted, indexed documents. It simplifies workflows so that people and institutions use time effectively. And because ProQuest connects information communities, complex networks of systems and processes work together efficiently. With ProQuest, finding answers and deriving insights is straightforward and leads to extraordinary outcomes.
ProQuest and its companies and affiliates – Ex Libris, Alexander Street, Bowker – stand for better research, better learning, better insights. ProQuest enables people to change their world.