ProQuest affiliate Bowker, e-book business ebrary and Choice, a publishing unit of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), have united to improve the accessibility and utility of Resources for College Libraries (RCL), a collection development tool for academic libraries.
Choice and Bowker, whose partnership created RCL, have launched a variety of enhancements including a mobile application for the web-based resource, which is used by academic libraries to identify core titles for scores of academic subject areas. Additionally, more than 13,000 RCL titles will now be available on the ebrary platform.
Originally launched in 2006, RCL is a suite of works based on the American Library Association's classic reference work, Books for College Libraries (BCL). As ebrary collections, it is expected that universities, colleges and other institutions will be able to provide their users with anytime, anywhere access to RCL's essential titles. RCL titles can be browsed by its broad range of subjects -- traditional liberal arts and sciences curriculum, business, computer science, education, engineering and health sciences – or by publisher.
The titles are supported with ebrary's features, such as free mobile apps for the iPad, iPhone, iPod touch and Android, along with InfoTools, granular usage statistics, and sophisticated searching and navigation. Through ebrary, RCL titles will also be surfaced through the ProQuest platform and the Summon service, significantly enhancing its discovery. RCL titles can be purchased as a perpetual archive and enabled for patron-driven acquisition.
Through Bowker, the RCL interface has been updated with a simpler browse function, faster search results and improved mobile access through Bowker's BookWire app, which enables subscribers to login to access book details and add titles to selected lists from any location. RCL also includes RSS feeds for new titles, and dynamic facets to help refine search. Content includes the full text of Choice reviews and easy identifiers for Choice Outstanding Academic Titles.
Three Bowker subscription options include the traditional RCL collection, which allows libraries to discover and collect over 80,000 essential titles in 61 core subject areas; Resources for College Libraries: Career Resources (CR), an essential list of 4,500 titles in 56 subject areas covering vocational, technical, and career programmes for two-year and four-year undergraduate institutions; and, RCL Plus, which includes both RCL and CR products.
