Introducing ProQuest Rialto

By Rich Belanger, Senior Vice President and General Manager, ProQuest Books

In 2015, we brought ProQuest and Ex Libris together, putting our complementary strengths within one company to innovate new solutions for librarians and their users. Today, I’m excited to announce a collaborative effort that will modernize the library’s selection and acquisition environment.

We are tightly integrating the capabilities of our selection and acquisition products to create a completely new, unified solution that will make selection and acquisition processes much more efficient, effective, timely and will greatly increase value to users.

Introducing ProQuest Rialto

Rialto will address libraries’ most common pain points in the selection and acquisition process. It will simplify work across multiple vendors, deliver data and analytics to make informed decisions -- and convey the value of the library -- and support emerging acquisition models, enabling libraries to get the most return on their investments.

Here’s how it will work:

• • Rialto will create a seamless, unified workflow across the library, as search-to-discovery flows smoothly and automatically within Alma.
  • Rialto will be a comprehensive marketplace with an expanded offering of non-ProQuest and ProQuest content of all types – books, ebooks, video and more. In alignment with our core value of supporting openness, the marketplace puts choice in the hands of libraries and will build community that empowers better sharing and collection utilization.
  • Data-driven recommendations and benchmarks will consistently improve and inform selection decisions to ensure effective use of library resources and communicate value. Rialto will help libraries buy what they need and use what they buy.
  • As ProQuest Rialto enters the development phase, we have invited 10 leading universities from North America and the United Kingdom to be development partners, ensuring Rialto is exactly what librarians need it to be.

Thank you to Boston University, Northeastern University, San Jose State University, Southern Methodist University, University of Texas at Dallas and University of Windsor in North America, and to our U.K. partners University of Edinburgh, University of Leicester, Northumbria University and Imperial College London. In early 2019, we will begin recruiting development partners in Australia and New Zealand.