NC LIVE Turns to ProQuest to Enrich Service to Libraries and Users

Sweeping changes to database selection enables consortium to stay within budget and expand diversity of content and services to members

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Oct 02, 2014, 11:31 ET

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Oct. 2, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- NC LIVE, a renowned consortium that provides digital content and services to public and academic libraries in North Carolina, is replacing a significant portion of its cadre of databases with ProQuest resources, enabling it to work within tight budget parameters without sacrificing quality to its member libraries. A new three-year agreement provides popular ProQuest databases such as ProQuest Central, the world's largest aggregated collection of full-text academic content, and an extraordinary selection of ebooks via ebrary's Academic Complete™ and Public Library Complete™ to more than 200 libraries serving users throughout the entire state.

NC LIVE Member Libraries: ProQuest and NC LIVE are offering free ProQuest Days on October 22, 23, 28 or 29 throughout the state to allow library staff opportunities to get acquainted with the new resources. Visit http://www.nclive.org for details.

NC LIVE Executive Director Tim Rogers blogged about the new database selection noting, "We believe that the change will both support the needs of all of our COIs [member libraries] and provide the organization with a sustainable subscription model that allows the flexibility to purchase new formats now and in the future. Two examples of this flexibility are the addition of the ebrary Academic Complete and Public Library Complete eBook subscriptions. The addition of these collections will enable all libraries to better meet their patrons' needs in high-demand areas."

NC LIVE has not had new funding since 2004, and in fact, its budget was cut by more than $400,000 between 2008 and 2010. However, through a careful and inclusive selection process that incorporated a variety of information sources -- including usage data, financial data, and library staff input -- the content available to member libraries for 2015- 2017 will provide the most diverse collection that NC LIVE has ever offered.

"It's particularly fulfilling for us to be able to help a library improve the diversity of its collection, expand the service it is able to provide to users and stay within their budget," said Jeff Wilensky, ProQuest vice-president, Information Solutions. "ProQuest created comprehensive, multi-disciplinary solutions like ProQuest Central and Academic Complete to accomplish exactly that feat. We're honored to work with NC LIVE and eager for Carolinians to experience new research power."

ProQuest Central is a CODiE award-winning research tool that integrates 30 of ProQuest's most highly used databases in a single academic resource. Beyond its thousands of essential journals, ProQuest Central also contains non-journal content that is increasingly vital to academic research -- news, market information, dissertations and working papers. Ebook databases, Academic Complete and Public Library Complete are similarly rich, multi-disciplinary collections that support a breadth of topics with extraordinary depth. Users can search ProQuest Central, Academic Complete and Public Library Complete simultaneously for an efficient, seamless research workflow.

About NC LIVE (www.nclive.org)

NC LIVE is a statewide library consortium that provides shared digital content and services to North Carolina's community colleges, public libraries, the UNC System, and NC Independent Colleges and Universities. Patrons of NC LIVE's 200 member libraries may access NC LIVE-provided eBooks, magazines, newspapers, journals, streaming videos, and more online via library websites, and through www.nclive.org.

About ProQuest (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^®, Dialog^®, ebrary^® and EBL^® businesses – and notable research tools such as the Summon^® discovery service, the ProQuest Flow™ collaboration 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