EBSCO adds details on publishers’ licenses
Jinfo Blog

16th March 2008

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EBSCONET adds details about publishers’ license agreements and provides content to Ariba EBSCO Information Services (www.ebsco.com) has added information about publisher license agreements to EBSCONET, its e-service platform for electronic and print resource management. With this enhancement EBSCO believes that it will help eliminate the need for its subscribers to navigate numerous publisher sites to locate license data. The company also believes that it will reduce the need to develop and manage desktop spreadsheets and databases that typically are used to hold such licensing information. To decide on which license data items to collect EBSCO has taken a two-fold approach. Initially it followed the Digital Library Federations’ E-Resource Management Initiative (ERMI) guidelines. http://www.diglib.org/standards/dlf-erm02.htm. (The DLF membership consists of national and academic libraries, mostly in the US.) Additionally it gathered input from customers. The result is a list of 50 key data elements, which will be displayed on EBSCONET. Librarians and other information professionals responsible for content licensing will be able to view the usage terms and conditions across publisher license agreements and link to the agreements themselves, according to the company’s press release. In describing the enhancement the President of EBSCO Information Services, Allen Powell, stated, “Our goal is to provide tools that integrate the vast amount of data we maintain for our library customers with systems and workflows that accomplish two key things — streamlining e-journal management tasks and helping librarians provide their users with access to every purchased resource. The new EBSCONET license details tool is a key enhancement that moves us further towards this goal.” http://www2.ebsco.com/en-us/NewsCenter/Pages/ViewArticle.aspx?QSID=213. This enhancement follows last year’s launch of the E-Journal Updates feature within EBSCONET, which was introduced to help information professionals track changes in journal pricing or availability. Given the different use and distribution agreements that publishers have created it is expected that this new tool will make it easier to identify and track what can be done with which sources within organisations. Those responsible for content licensing should also find it easier to compare terms available from different publishers and thereby be in a stronger position when negotiating usage and distribution terms. EBSCO also announced in the same week that it is the first vendor to provide Express Content for subscriptions and publications as part of the Express Content program offered by Ariba, Inc., the spend management solutions provider. According to an exclusive agreement in the magazine and subscriptions category, EBSCO Information MarketPlace® (MarketPlace) will provide users of Ariba procurement solutions an Express Catalog with more than two million newspaper, magazine, book and e-journal titles using Ariba Ready® Level 2 PunchOut technology. EBSCO Information MarketPlace is a Web-based expenditure management service that collects data and provides reports on a company’s subscriptions and publications spend. http://www2.ebsco.com/EN-US/NEWSCENTER/Pages/ViewArticle.aspx?QSID=212.

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