STM industry news service Knowledgespeak interviewed Marty Kahn, CEO, ProQuest, LLC, on Wednesday, as part of the on-site interviews series it is conducting at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
When asked about how external challenges such as library budget constraints and new technologies are affecting publishers, Marty said that the last two years had been especially difficult on library budgets because of the global recession. Libraries were facing increasing pressures to serve increasingly more demanding sets of patrons with a variety of print and electronic materials and that ProQuest had focussed its attention on technologies that have helped libraries gain more from their investments.
When queried about how the Internet has affected the way secondary (or bibliographic) databases are packaged and used for research processes, Marty said that the internet has indeed changed a lot and has significantly increased expectations of all users and that ProQuest's response to this can be seen in the nature of its investments - such as creating a new platform that allows for the integrated search of A&I and Full Text databases. He further talked about how ProQuest has recently gone through a cycle of deep investment and during this process, has expanded its presence in this area.
Talking on mobile technology, Marty recognized that there is no way to predict what devices will eventually become the most accepted norm in the industry; however ProQuest has taken extensive steps to ensure that they are enabled to take full advantage of the wide breadth of emerging mobile technology and the generally increasing interest in "self-service".
The complete interview will be published in Knowledgespeak in the near future.
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