Primo will provide a seamless discovery experience for users at both institutions to search the library's Talis system
London, UK - November 25, 2010. Ex Libris® Group, a world leader in the provision of library automation solutions, is pleased to announce that the Universities of Manchester and Sheffield, in the north of England, have chosen to provide a unified discovery experience for students and faculty using the Primo® discovery and delivery solution, together with the Primo Central Index of scholarly e-content. In both institutions, Primo will provide a search interface enabling users to access digital and electronic resources, as well as local holdings managed by the library's Talis library system.
Tracey Clarke, Assistant Director & Head of Collections and eStrategy at The University of Sheffield, remarked: "We are delighted to be implementing the Primo resource discovery solution as a key strand in the project to re-profile our library systems, with the aim of placing the customer experience at the centre of the resource discovery agenda. Offering improved service levels by means of a single search interface that includes customizable faceted searching and relevance ranking will be a tangible benefit for our constituency as a research library."
"We intend to add further value to Primo by exposing the full spectrum of our collections, including digital, print, research repository material, and special collections, via the unified system, thereby leveraging our existing assets more effectively," added Ms Clarke.
Primo will serve as a discovery layer to The University of Manchester's existing Talis system, as well as being integrated with the library's SFX OpenURL link resolver. "We chose Primo to help us to deliver our strategic goal of improving the user experience by providing simple, fast, and easy access to our resources," commented Lorraine Beard, head of information systems at The University of Manchester. "Primo was the only discovery solution that met all our key functional requirements and provided excellent coverage of our resources. We were also impressed by the strategic and professional approach of the company."
"It is exciting to see Primo being adopted as a discovery and delivery solution for a variety of international and local library systems, including-in the case of the University of Manchester and the University of Sheffield-Talis systems," commented Christoph Frech, Regional Sales Director at Ex Libris. "We are delighted to welcome these two institutions to the 15-strong Primo community in the UK."
About the Primo Central Index
The world-class Primo Central Index is a mega aggregate of scholarly content. Managed by Ex Libris in a cloud computing environment, Primo Central Index is vendor-neutral and encompasses scholarly resources from leading information providers. Coupled with the Primo discovery and delivery solution, library users simultaneously explore the library's local collections and Primo Central Index's extensive global electronic collections, and instantly retrieve accurate, relevance-ranked search results.
About the University of Manchester
The University of Manchester was formed by merging The Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST, two of Britain's most distinguished universities. After a hundred years of working together, these two institutions formally combined to form a single university in 2004. The University of Manchester has a rich academic heritage and can lay claim to 25 Nobel Laureates amongst its current and former staff and students. Many of the advances of the 20th century began at the University, such as the work by Rutherford leading to the splitting of the atom and the developments of the world's first modern computer in 1948.
For more information about the University of Manchester, see http://www.manchester.ac.uk/
About the University of Sheffield
The University of Sheffield was formed by the merging, in 1897, of the Sheffield Medical School, Firth College, and the Sheffield Technical School, to form the University College of Sheffield, which in turn became the University of Sheffield in 1905. The University now has over 24,000 students from 131 countries, and almost 6,000 staff. Academic departments are grouped into five faculties: Arts and Humanities; Engineering; Medicine, Dentistry and Health; Science; and Social Sciences.
For more information about the University of Sheffield, see http://www.manchester.ac.uk
About Ex Libris
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 75 countries on six continents.
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 Initiatives and Commentary blogs, and follow our Twitter page.