ProQuest Launches Ebook Central

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 15, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- After months of intensive testing with library beta partners and researchers from around the world, ProQuest launched its highly-anticipated ProQuest Ebook Central™ today. With the widest selection of content, the most flexibility, and backed with the market's most sophisticated administrative engine, Ebook Central enables libraries to significantly improve users' ebook research outcomes and boost the productivity of their staff. 

"We're delivering on a promise we made to librarians to boost the power of ebooks for research," said Kevin Sayar, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Books. "Ebook Central does exactly that with a platform that's flexible enough to respond to any environment and tools that empower librarians and users to achieve their most important goals."

Ebook Central's development has been guided by intensive study of the ebook workflows of librarians and researchers and ongoing market surveys that have explored acquisition trends, ebook use by subject, as well as routines and frustrations about working with ebooks. The result is a platform that delivers improvements to virtually every aspect of the ebook experience.

At the core of Ebook Central is an exhaustive selection of authoritative, scholarly content -- 790,000 titles and 1,350 imprints from more than 650 publishers on one platform. An average of 100,000 newly published titles will be added each year to so that libraries can build dynamic collections that address the unique needs of their community of researchers.

The content is backed with a powerful administrative and acquisition engine -- LibCentral™ -- that simplifies librarian workflows with multiple models, including DDA, STL, outright purchase, non-linear lending, among others, enabling librarians to customize according to their budget requirements. LibCentral's easy and reliable collection management and assessment tools -- with flexible administrative controls and built-in interoperability with key vendors -- eliminate redundant and tedious tasks, enabling librarians to do more in less time. 

Ebook Central supports users with an unmatched, end-to-end experience. The platform's intuitive, user-centric design makes it faster and easier to discover, evaluate, and access titles while increasing user engagement with time-saving tools for note-taking, highlighting, and instant citing. Users can read online or take advantage of offline reading options including DRM free chapter downloads and full book downloads. Support for mobile devices is offered via a responsive web design that optimizes heavily used features such as search and download on tablets and smartphones.

A variety of libraries have gone live on Ebook Central, and the balance of ProQuest's ebrary and EBL customers will be upgraded to the new experience over the next year. An effortless transition to Ebook Central is being ensured with a dedicated ProQuest representative assisting customers throughout the simple upgrade process.

Tracey Vitnell, Library Manager for Gilbert + Tobin, described her upgrade from EBL to Ebook Central as "Really smooth. We are excited to have access to this new modern interface for our patrons, and also relieved that all the URL's redirected automatically and without any hassle."

Ebook Central is a living product and represents the first step in ProQuest's vision to create a single workflow for print and e titles by integrating Coutts Information Services and OASIS platform with Ebook Central.

About ProQuest (http://www.proquest.com)

ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company's products are a gateway to the world's knowledge including dissertations, governmental and cultural archives, news, historical collections, and ebooks. ProQuest technologies serve users across the critical points in research, helping them discover, access, share, create, and manage information.

The company's cloud-based technologies offer flexible solutions for librarians, students, and researchers through the ProQuest^®, Bowker^®, Coutts^® information services, Dialog^®, Ex Libris^®, ebrary^®, EBL™, and SIPX^® businesses – and notable research tools such as the Summon^® discovery service, the RefWorks^® citation and document management platform, MyiLibrary^® ebook platform, the Pivot^® research development tool, and the Intota™ library services platform. The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with offices around the world.

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SOURCE ProQuest

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