ProQuest is boosting the visibility of ebooks in library collections by indexing the full text of the entire catalogue of EBL - Ebook Library in its Summon® discovery service. EBL's expansive catalogue of more than 400,000 ebooks is now even more discoverable alongside titles from ebrary, which have been full-text indexed in the Summon service since 2012. The work to broaden discovery and accessibility of ebooks is occurring simultaneously with another major project: the integration of EBL and ebrary into a single ebook solution.
EBL has built a worldwide reputation for innovation focused on the specific needs of academic, research and corporate libraries. Its range of flexible access models includes Demand-driven Acquisition (DDA) as well as the unique Non-Linear™ Lending license. The Summon service will search across all of a library's EBL titles, including automatically-updated DDA holdings. As a result, an ebook purchase or loan can occur within the EBL platform, but start from the library's point of discovery, dramatically streamlining ordering and precisely tuning the library's holdings to users' needs.
The Summon service is renowned for its single, unified index that enables users to search all content at the same time, producing fast search response times with the highest degree of reliability. It leverages match and merge technology to combine, normalize, and correct full-text and metadata, such as abstracts, subject terms, thesauri and controlled vocabularies, citation counts, and enrichment data. Bringing together this information enhances relevance and increases discoverability of content, whether a user searches with natural-language queries or database-specific controlled vocabularies.
EBL's metadata has been indexed in Summon since 2009. Enhancing with full-text indexing of both EBL and ebrary catalogues is part of ProQuest's larger initiative to improve ebook visibility and accessibility in library collections. The full text of not only ebrary's expansive catalogue, but the lauded HathiTrust collection as well are already indexed in the Summon service, enabling users to discover ebooks from the front door of the library. Ebook management and access will advance further when ProQuest launches the integrated platform for EBL and ebrary, designed to provide the broadest content, flexible access models, and exceptional user experience, all supported with rich analytics for data-driven decision-making.
