June 20, 2011
The bX article recommender expands horizons for researchers around the world Jerusalem, Israel—June 20, 2011. Ex Libris® Group, a world leader in the provision of library technology solutions, is pleased to announce that following the selection of the bX article recommender service by the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI), the number of institutions using bX now exceeds 1000. bX was developed as a collaborative effort between Ex Libris and the preeminent Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers Johan Bollen and Herbert Van de Sompel—the creator of the SFX® OpenURL link resolver. Focused solely on the scholarly domain, bX is the first service to provide recommendations that are generated from researchers’ usage data. The article recommendations are based on an analysis of hundreds of millions of usage logs contributed by worldwide SFX customers who are bX subscribers. As a cloud-based service, bX does not require the library to install or maintain any software on its local networks. Released in May 2009, bX has enjoyed unprecedented growth—demonstrating that the provision of scholarly recommendations is important to researchers who require a complete, successful discovery process. The bX recommender service has become an established and highly valued service for many academic institutions, including five of the top 10 universities in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings list. Kirsten Leonard, executive director at PALNI, commented, ”We’re very excited to license bX as an addition to our new resource discovery interface, Primo. We were aware of bX’s success in offering article recommendations at other institutions, and already bX is one of the most important aspects of the Primo experience to our users during the user-testing phase. bX will assist our users in finding the research materials most pertinent to their needs and will also reduce the need for interlibrary loan requests. Above all, bX makes the journals we subscribe to more visible to users, thereby increasing the value of the subscriptions we pay for.” ”We’re thrilled to be providing this groundbreaking service to so many libraries in such a short time,” remarked Christine Stohn, bX product manager at Ex Libris. ”The popularity of bX highlights the importance of mining usage patterns for discovery purposes, a realm in which Ex Libris is leading the way. bX enables libraries to deliver the scholarly discovery experience that users are seeking today. The most rewarding thing about bX is the positive feedback about it from researchers, who absolutely love the service.” About PALNI The Private Academic Library Network of Indiana was organized as a non-profit membership organization in 1992 and provides sophisticated resource-sharing and library automation services to its 23 member libraries. The system includes a shared online library catalog, as well as subsystems to support each library’s circulation control, technical services, and reference activities. For more information about PALNI, see http://www.palni.edu. About Ex Libris Dedicated to developing creative solutions in close collaboration with customers, Ex Libris enables academic, national, and research 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 more information about Ex Libris Group, see our Web site, join us on Facebook, visit our Commentary blog, and follow our Twitter page.
Ex Libris is a leading provider of automation solutions for academic 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 facilitate their transition into the future. Ex Libris maintains an impressive customer base consisting of thousands of sites in more than 80 countries on six continents.
