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Ex Libris today announced the acquisition of Wolverhampton, U.K.-based oMbiel, developer of the campusM and governmentM cloud-based mobile app solutions for universities and local government services, respectively. The company will be incorporated into Ex Libris as a new business unit, Ex Libris Mobile Campus Solutions, led by oMbiel founder and CEO Hugh Griffiths. Terms of the sale were not disclosed.
Ex Libris today announced the acquisition of Wolverhampton, U.K.-based oMbiel, developer of the campusM and governmentM cloud-based mobile app solutions for universities and local government services, respectively. The company will be incorporated into Ex Libris as a new business unit, Ex Libris Mobile Campus Solutions, led by oMbiel founder and CEO Hugh Griffiths. Terms of the sale were not disclosed.
April 2014 marked the launch of the Ex Libris Developer Network, a new, open environment designed to enable IT professionals, developers, third-party vendors, and others to collaborate and experiment with applications and extensions for Ex Libris Group products, including the next-generation Alma library services platform (LSP), the Primo discovery solution, and the traditional integrated library systems (ILS) Aleph and Voyager.
In a move that will enhance the functionality of discovery services available through its partners and competitors alike, EBSCO Information Services last month announced a new policy on metadata sharing that will make all metadata for 129 of its full-text databases, more than 550,000 ebooks and more than 70 historical digital archives available to third-party discovery services. The policy also outlines a commitment to provide assistance with linking technology that has been requested by customers. Previously, the company had required third-party discovery services, such as OCLC’s WorldCat or Ex Libris’s Primo Discovery and Delivery, to use an EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) API in order to search EBSCO content.
Roger Brisson, the head of metadata services at Boston University (BU) Libraries, has been deeply immersed in the cloud-based library services platform Alma from Ex Libris for the better part of two years. BU went live with Alma in November, one of the early adopters, and Brisson, as part of the ALA Midwinter Conference, explained […]
Golden Gate Capital, a $12 billion San Francisco-based private equity firm with a significant software and technology portfolio, has entered into an agreement to acquire library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group from current owner Leeds Equity Partners, the companies announced this morning. The deal is expected to be completed in December. Under new ownership, Ex Libris will remain an independent business based in Jerusalem and run by the current management team, the company explained in the announcement. Additional terms of the sale were not disclosed.
There is great hope that these rapidly maturing discovery products will not only promote information literacy strategies but also deliver what metasearch (or federated search) has failed to achieve—a Google-like interface that provides a fast, single point of entry to an institution’s relevant and vetted scholarly content. However, at the moment, even as libraries are struggling to reestablish themselves as a compelling place to start research, the three constituencies—libraries, content providers, and discovery service vendors—cannot even agree on a common vocabulary to describe what they do.
All 37 member libraries of the Orbis Cascade Alliance will replace their current ILS and discovery systems with the Ex Libris Alma unified resource management system and Primo discovery solution, the Alliance announced today. Following an extensive request for proposal process, the Orbis council of library directors decided to enter into a contract with library automation provider Ex Libris in July.
Boston College University Libraries (BCL) has replaced multiple systems previously used for managing print, electronic, and digital collections with a single consolidated solution provided by Ex Libris’ next-generation Alma library management service, the company announced on July 11. BCL is the first of more than 70 institutions that will be using the new cloud-based […]
