Liberty University Chooses Serials Solutions Summon™ Discovery Service
Nov. 29, 2010 - Seattle - Serials Solutions, a business unit of ProQuest LLC, announced today that Liberty University (LU), the world’s largest Christian university, has selected Serials Solutions’ Summon™ web-scale discovery service.
“We are committed to meeting the needs of our students and making our library content easier to discover,” said Carl H. Merat, head of collection management with Liberty University. “With more than 125,000 electronic full-text books, 67,000 electronic full-text journals, and 315,000 print and media items in our library, we knew it was time to look at replacing federated search with a search solution that is easier to use and significantly more comprehensive. The Summon service was the clear choice for us.”
The Summon™ discovery service is attractive to the librarians at Liberty University and other institutions because it enables a familiar web-searching experience of the full breadth of content found in library collections – from books and videos to e-resources at the article level. In addition, because the Summon™ service is offered as Software as a Service (SaaS), it is continually being enhanced and improved. An example of this is the Serials Solutions pilot program recently announced for its Summon™ service with JSTOR.
This pilot project will allow students and researchers at institutions subscribing to the Summon™ web-scale discovery service to automatically find their library’s Summon™ service search box when they use JSTOR. In addition to the content available on JSTOR, users will be able to easily discover additional materials in their particular library’s collection, enabling faster, simpler research.
“A university of our size, especially with such a substantial online population, requires the integration of innovative solutions for research,” Merat said. “In selecting the Summon service, we are able to provide our students with a single, centralized place to begin their research. Because Summon gathers information about our library resources in advance, like popular web search engines do, it provides a quick and easy way to uncover the information they need for their research.”
“We are thrilled that this technologically savvy university with a significant online population has selected the Summon discovery service,” said Stan Sorensen, vice president product management and marketing for Serials Solutions. “In addition to helping students who come into the physical library, Summon will also offer improved access to the LU virtual library. With Summon, students can easily discover the library’s vast resources, no matter where they are.”
“The Summon service untangles and brings together the universe of academic resources through industry leading information management practices,” concluded Merat. “Superior customer service, indexing practices, interface labeling, customization and reporting, along with the promise of user profiles made Summon a clear winner in our comparisons. We expect to see a significant return on the investments we make in print and digital resources while saving the time of our users.”
About Liberty University
Liberty University®, founded in 1971 by Jerry Falwell Sr., prepares Christian leaders to influence their world. With 64,000 undergraduate and graduate students, Liberty is America’s 8th largest university and is the world’s largest Christian university. http://www.liberty.edu
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.