E-Resource Access and Management Services (ERAMS) provider Serials Solutions, US, has announced that the company is celebrating its tenth year of operations. The company was launched in 2000 by Peter McCracken, a reference librarian at the University of Washington's Odegaard Undergraduate Library, along with his brothers and two other partners. It is claimed to be the first company devoted solely to helping libraries manage the burgeoning area of electronic resources. A decade and several products later, Serials Solutions has purportedly grown to serve some 3,000 libraries worldwide, offering an array of library technology that includes a complete family of integrated solutions.
The original partners - all of whom held other full-time jobs - worked on Serials Solutions' first product out of a dark Seattle basement in their spare time. It is projected as the first ever electronic 'knowledgebase,' an A to Z index of e-titles.
Today there are 175 employees dedicated to its worldwide offerings. The suite of tools is built on a consistent software architecture geared to help assist librarians and library patrons. These services include Serials Solutions Knowledge Works, Serials Solutions 360, Ulrich's Global Serials Intelligence, Aquabrowser, WebFeat and the Summon web scale discovery service.
Serials Solutions' discovery tools seek to enable simple, easy and fast detection of materials located within an entire library collection enabling librarians and patrons to derive the most value from resources. Its hosted management services provide librarians with the tools to centralise and organise licences, subscriptions, terms and contracts for their electronic material. These solutions and services are expected to help improve workflow, reduce librarians' workloads and ultimately reduce operating costs.
Serials Solutions counts among its key milestones a number of library industry firsts including the development of the first commercially-available e-resource knowledge base; the first cost-effective solution for creating MARC (machine-readable cataloging) records for a library's electronic journals; the first e-resource assessment service for the delivery of cost and usage analysis; the first integrated e-resource access and management solution; and the first web-scale discovery service - the Summon service.
Going forward, Serials Solutions will continue to focus on helping librarians manage their ever increasing electronic collections, and the company will help libraries serve their patrons through the devices that patrons use every day.
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