July 9, 2009
Primo Central, hosted and managed by Ex Libris, indexes scholarly materials of global academic significance
Chicago, IL—July 9, 2009. Ex Libris® Group is pleased to announce the introduction of a new Primo® component, Primo Central, which indexes scholarly materials such as articles and e-books provided by publishers and aggregators. Primo Central, seamlessly integrated into local Primo systems, will be managed by Ex Libris as a service available to all Primo customers. The beta release of Primo Central is planned for the end of 2009.
More than 180 leading academic and research institutions in 23 countries already benefit from the power of the Primo solution, installed locally or managed by Ex Libris as a service. Primo enables libraries to offer their users effective, branded discovery and delivery services that are fully customized to reflect local emphases and needs. Primo Central extends the power of Primo by providing users with seamless access to the entire library offering. With Primo Central, users will be able to simultaneously search in locally managed collections and global e-content, with the search results blended into a single relevance-ranked list.
”We are very excited about extending the Primo environment to include Primo Central,” commented Nancy Dushkin, vice president of marketing at Ex Libris. ”With the cooperation of information providers, we are building a high quality index of scholarly materials that broadens the search scope that Primo libraries can make available to their users. Furthermore, Primo Central offers information providers yet another channel through which they can reach library users,” added Dushkin.
”Primo was designed from the outset to provide a range of search technologies, including searching in a locally created index and metasearching. These technologies enable a library to pick the information resources that best address its users’ needs and control the way in which information is offered and displayed to the users,” explained Gilad Gal, Primo product manager. ”Primo Central fits perfectly into the Primo search environment, maintaining the high performance and quality relevance ranking of Primo.”
The rapidly growing list of publishers participating in Primo Central includes EBSCO; Alexander Street Press; IOP Publishing; the Johns Hopkins University Press/Project MUSE; the National Academy of Sciences/PNAS; the United States National Library of Medicine/PubMed®; the American Institute of Physics, together with a number of their Scitation® hosting platform partners, including SPIE, SIAM, and the Acoustical Society of America; the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD); and more. These organizations are collaborating with Ex Libris on a global scale to enable library users to find and access valuable authoritative content in their local library and through the growing network of Primo libraries.
Ex Libris will be giving a preview of Primo Central at the ALA conference in Chicago, July 9-14, 2009, and will be working with library partners on the ongoing development of this service.
For additional information on Primo Central, visit the Ex Libris Web site and follow developments on the Ex Libris Initiatives blog.
About Ex Libris
Ex Libris is a leading provider of automation solutions for academic, national, and research libraries. Offering the only comprehensive product suite for electronic, digital, and print materials, Ex Libris provides efficient, user-friendly products that serve the needs of libraries today and will enable them to transition into the future. Ex Libris maintains an impressive customer base consisting of thousands of sites in more than 70 countries on six continents.
Dedicated to developing creative solutions in close collaboration with customers, Ex Libris enables libraries to maximize productivity and efficiency and, at the same time, greatly enhance the user experience. By empowering users to discover and obtain the information they need, libraries ensure their position as the bridge to knowledge.
For additional information on Ex Libris Group, see our Web site, visit our Initiatives and Commentary blogs, and follow our Twitter page.
