by Zach Miller
Quick Summary
Edited from EBSCO and Ex Libris press releases Editor’s note: EBSCO recently announced a new policy that allows much of its database content to be indexed in competitors’ discovery systems, a practice it has not employed for years.
At EBSCO, we are committed to providing rich content and increasing the usage and value of library collections. Today we are announcing a new policy to share an unprecedented level of content to third-party discovery systems. Our policy is intended to facilitate greater collaboration among library resource vendors, and ensure an improved overall library discovery experience for end users.
Our policy specifies the EBSCO content that will be made available to third-party discovery systems in the context of a partnership. Our policy aims to ensure that libraries have both the content and applicable OPAC resource integration – regardless of the discovery service that the library chooses.
To ensure an open approach to communication among library partners and vendor partners, we have made our policy available on our web site: www.ebscohost.com/metadata-sharing-policy.
We look forward to greater working partnerships with discovery and ILS vendors to provide the best experience for our mutual customers.
Ex Libris Response to the EBSCO Policy for Metadata Sharing & Collaboration (edited) April 21, 2014Ex Libris has reviewed with great interest the EBSCO Policy for Metadata Sharing & Collaboration, which was released on April 18, 2014. We are very pleased that EBSCO starts addressing the growing concern of the library community regarding the discoverability of the EBSCO content that the libraries license. EBSCO’s policy also responds to current industry initiatives, such as the recently published draft LIBLICENSE Model License (clause 5b), which requires that the licensor makes available the licensed materials through the licensee’s discovery service of choice, and the draft NISO Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) report, soon to be published in its final form. The ODI report recommends that “content providers should make available to discovery service providers metadata and underlying full-text/original content for complete offerings, for the purposes of indexing to meet licensed customers’ and authenticated end users’ needs.”
While we welcome the new EBSCO approach to sharing and collaboration and look forward to a real change, we are concerned by the fact that EBSCO only selectively complies with the above industry standards and that only some of the EBSCO collections will become discoverable as a result of the new open policy—EBSCO is not applying this policy to many of their collections, and in particular their subject indexes. We do hope that the current policy terms mark the beginning of a longer term policy under which EBSCO will make all relevant content available for discovery by all EBSCO licensees. We also encourage EBSCO to publicly and openly discuss related topics, such as compliance with industry recommendations and the barriers that EBSCO set up to open all their collections.
EBSCO Metadata Sharing Policy Update (edited) April 30, 2014We also wanted to address a common question that we received about the expected timing of implementation. From EBSCO’s perspective, we would like to establish working arrangements with other article-level discovery vendors as soon as possible. We are in active discussions with two of the three potential partners and are hopeful that it will soon be all three, so we may establish this content and technology sharing with your vendor in the very near future. We will provide an update as soon as we have partner news to share, but it would be inappropriate for us to provide more details about any particular potential partnership at this time.
