The following press release was issued by one of the University Libraries’ new vendors, Ex Libris, and describes new online services that University Libraries plans to implement soon. More details will follow as planning progresses, but we thought you should have an idea of what is headed our way.
Chicago, IL—Ex Libris® Group, a world leader in the provision of library automation solutions, is pleased to announce that the University of Oklahoma Libraries—including libraries at the Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, University of Oklahoma-Tulsa, and University of Oklahoma College of Law—have selected the Ex Libris Primo® discovery and delivery solution, the bX article recommender, and the SFX® OpenURL link resolver. These Ex Libris solutions will replace EBSCO EDS and LinkSource systems.
A new member of the Ex Libris community, the University of Oklahoma (OU) Libraries opted for Primo as part of a wider initiative to strengthen the libraries’ ability to serve the research needs of students and faculty. Primo will provide the library team with more flexibility in areas such as interface customization, relevance ranking, and the configuration of facets. Furthermore, Primo will enable each library to adjust the blending of results so that users are presented with an appropriate balance of local and global collections. The advanced ScholarRank technology will offer users a discovery experience that is personalized to meet their own academic needs and interests.
“At the heart of Dean Rick Luce’s strategic plan is a focus on rethinking library services so they are in alignment with the way our community is now learning and performing research. We want to create excellence in the library experience, campus research initiatives, and scholarly communications. We also plan to build on our special collections, which hold some of the most significant works in the history of science, including complete sets of first editions of the printed works of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Darwin, to name a few,” explained OU Libraries Associate Dean of Knowledge Services and Chief Technology Officer Carl Grant. “With these goals in mind, our team sought a discovery solution with the flexibility to enable us to address the diverse needs of our user community while giving us full control over how our collections are represented and used. Finally, we wanted a content-neutral product to maintain the checks and balances in our licensed scholarly content supply chain.”
Mark Triest, president of Ex Libris North America, remarked: “We are proud to welcome the University of Oklahoma to the global Primo community of over 1900 institutions. This decision serves as a clear expression of the OU Libraries’ role in creating the most up-to-date learning and research environment for faculty and students in 2013 and beyond. We are looking forward to a meaningful collaboration with the University of Oklahoma Libraries in the years to come.”
About the University of Oklahoma
Attracting top students from across the nation and more than 100 countries around the world, the University of Oklahoma (OU) provides a major university experience in a private college atmosphere. OU is number one nationwide in the number of National Merit Scholars enrolled in public universities and is in the top 10 nationwide in the graduation of Rhodes Scholars from public universities. OU has emerged as a pacesetter for public higher education in the United States; the Princeton Review ranks OU among the top 10 public universities in the nation in terms of academic excellence and cost for students. For more information, see http://www.ou.edu/.
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 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.
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.
