Brown University Adopts Serials Solutions Summon™ Discovery Service
Serials Solutions®, a business unit of ProQuest® LLC, today announced that Brown University Library has chosen to adopt the Summon™ web-scale discovery service to improve the discoverability and usability of library electronic resources for its students, faculty and staff. The Summon™ service enables Brown University's researchers to receive the most relevant information from the full breadth of content found in the library's licensed collections, and ensures that these invaluable resources are more easily found and used.
"After a thorough review of discovery systems, the Brown University Library chose to implement the Serials Solutions Summon service in order to improve searchability and access to our online resources," said Harriette Hemmasi, Joukowsky Family University Librarian with Brown University. "The Summon approach offers flexibility for future improvements, and was the most popular choice with users and library staff."
Established in 1764, Brown University is the seventh-oldest college in the United States and currently has a full-time enrollment of more than 8,400 undergraduate and graduate students. As an acclaimed Ivy League institution, Brown University Library collections boast more than 6.8 million print items, plus a multitude of electronic resources and expanding digital archives. The library subscribes to hundreds of online databases, tens of thousands of e-journals and online newspapers, and e-books, available anytime to members of the Brown community around the world.
"Serials Solutions is dedicated to enabling the discovery of information in an intuitive manner that is beneficial for both users and librarians," said John Law, vice president of discovery solutions at Serials Solutions. "Librarians spend a large portion of their annual budgets on acquiring resources, so it's vital for them to ensure these valuable resources are being fully utilized. With the Summon service, Brown University Library is maximizing the return on investment for its electronic resources, and increasing the discoverability of the full breadth of the library's subscribed databases, e-resources and physical materials."
Brown University Library joins more than 250 libraries and research institutions subscribed to the Summon™ service, many of whom are seeing a substantial increase in the use of their library's collections. Currently, the Summon™ service allows researchers to search the full text of content from more than 7,000 providers and contains more than 750 million records.
Recognized as the Best Enterprise Search Solution at the 2011 CODiE Awards by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the Summon™ service offers the most compelling user experience by providing an easy and open discovery experience. With a single unified index, the Summon™ service provides instant access to the breadth of authoritative content that is the hallmark of great libraries.
About ProQuest (www.proquest.com)
ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company has forged a 70-year reputation as a gateway to the world's knowledge — from dissertations to governmental and cultural archives to news, in all its forms. Its role is essential to libraries and other organizations whose missions depend on the delivery of complete, trustworthy information.
ProQuest's massive information pool is accessible through the all-new ProQuest® platform, which moves beyond navigation to empower researchers to use, create, and share content—accelerating research productivity.
This energetic, fast-growing organization includes the Summon™ web-scale discovery service, the new ProQuest Dialog™ service, and business units ebrary®, Serials Solutions®, RefWorks-COS™, and Bowker®.