News from Endeavor
News from Endeavor
Interface with Blackboard
Endeavor Information Systems has announced the development of an interface between the ENCompass system for managing, searching and linking diverse collections and the Blackboard Learning System. This interaction aims to make it easy for faculty to provide quality library resources as part of their online course setting.
The combined interface assists in course creation and gives students single log-on access to learning resources and learning tools, expanding efforts to build a virtual campus for learning. Instructors can locate resources on a topic– whether the information is in a remote commercial database, a print book in the library, or a librarian-qualified Web site. Instructors can now easily search the library's digital content for relevant course material and instantly"collect" this information in their course materials using the Blackboard Learning System. Faculty could create pre-defined ENCompass searches for students and select documents, images and other digital information to be used as course content.
"A natural relationship of advanced learning resources, the Blackboard Learning System provides online access to course content while ENCompass provides the most advanced opportunities for digital research. This combination leverages the strengths of each individual system and benefits the library's users", commented Jane Burke, Endeavor President and CEO. "Endeavor understands libraries want to integrate with course management systems like Blackboard to provide the most qualified and relevant resources for today's researchers. This partnership helps libraries be the champions of research on their campus by using familiar and intuitive technology."
"We are very pleased to have developed this relationship with Endeavor for the benefit of campus constituents", said Matthew Pittinsky, chairman of Blackboard Inc. "We see the Blackboard Learning System and ENCompass as completely complementary systems that are part of a common category of student and faculty facing systems that extend the back office to improve the daily educational experience."
Blackboard Inc. was founded to transform the Internet into a powerful environment for teaching and learning. The company offers a complete suite of enterprise software products and services that power a total "e-education infrastructure" for schools, colleges, universities and other education providers. Blackboard solutions deliver the promise of the Internet for online teaching and learning, campus communities, auxiliary services and integration of Web-enabled student services and back office systems.
ScienceDirect supports OpenURL standard
ScienceDirect, a division of Elsevier Science, has announced that it now supports the OpenURL standard. This addresses the growing market need for bi-directional interaction between ScienceDirect and other services via local linking systems. This significantly expands access to the world's scientific literature via the ScienceDirect platform.
ScienceDirect's support of the OpenURL standard means that libraries can now link directly from abstracts to ScienceDirect to the content and services from many other resources. Equally so, links can easily be enabled from other library resources directly to ScienceDirect.
"OpenURL is an important consideration for our customers and their direct feedback was one of the primary reasons for our change of policy. Scientists and librarians will be able to get to the appropriate copy they need a lot more easily and directly, wherever this document is hosted", says Frank Vrancken Peeters, managing director of ScienceDirect.
To facilitate easy customer implementation of local linking software enabled by the OpenURL standard, ScienceDirect is partnering with Endeavor Information Systems and Ex Libris. ScienceDirect's use of the OpenURL protocol enables direct linking through LinkFinderPlus and SFX (www.sfixit.com)to its full-text articles.
"Any library with LinkFinderPlus installed, now can offer the bi-directional linking that enables end users to navigate with exceptional speed across the breadth of scientific literature to locate the documents they need",says Jane Burke, president and CEO of Endeavor.
Ex Libris's SFX is also fully supported by ScienceDirect's OpenURL implementation. Jenny Walker, director of sales and marketing for the Information Services Division of Ex Libris, comments:
This is excellent news for our growing number of mutual customers who will benefit greatly from these developments. By supporting the OpenURL standard, Elsevier Science confirms the importance of context sensitive linking and OpenURL initiatives.
Elsevier Science supports the ongoing development of OpenURL and participates in the NISO committee that is refining the OpenURL standard. A founding member of CrossRef, Elsevier Science is committed to actively supporting industry-wide cross-platform linking solutions.
ScienceDirect (www.info.sciencedirect.com),the world's largest provider of scientific, technical and medical information,is an open platform offering its subscribers desktop access to more than two million full-text articles. Coverage includes over 1,500 journals published by Elsevier Science and access to journals from around 120 publishers through CrossRef. An expanding suite of scientific full text and databases in a rich linking environment provides subscribers with extensive access and increased flexibility to the world's published STM literature.
ScienceDirect is a division of Elsevier Science (www.elsevier.com), and part of the Reed Elsevier plc group (www.reed-elsevier.com). Operating in the scientific, legal and business-to-business sectors, Reed Elsevier provides high value and flexible information solutions to users, with increasing emphasis on the Internet as a delivery method.
ENCompass link to LexisNexis
Endeavor Information Systems and LexisNexis have announced an agreement that will make selective LexisNexis databases available through ENCompass, Endeavor's digital management, organisation and linking tool. Through an XML Gateway,ENCompass will be able to search specified content from three popular LexisNexis research databases: LexisNexis Academic Universe, LexisNexis Congressional Universe, and LexisNexis Statistical Universe.
The first agreement of its kind with LexisNexis, the Endeavor plan will provide a single point of access for simultaneous searching that will include these three popular library databases. ENCompass employs multi-protocol federated searching across resources, using traditional protocols like Z39.50 and new technology advances in XML gateways and HTTP searching.
"With the ENCompass XML gateway to LexisNexis content, researchers can have one-stop shopping to selected areas of a very valuable and extremely popular resource like Academic Universe, plus discover content from local library collections, other databases and the local library OPAC", said Jane Burke, Endeavor President and CEO. "Endeavor is happy to partner with the database vendors that are instrumental in the important research happening at academic and research libraries. We are very proud to be working with LexisNexis to enable even more researchers to find valuable content quickly."
"In today's information environment, librarians are rightly concerned about their users' ability to harness the power of the myriad resources they subscribe to", said Timothy Fusco, Vice President LexisNexis Business and Academic Publishing. "We are excited about the ENCompass XML gateway's potential to simplify searching from a user's standpoint and increase access to the range of resources that a library offers. Crucial to the success of the gateway is the presence of trusted and authoritative content, which LexisNexis is pleased to be able to provide."
LexisNexis is a leader in comprehensive and authoritative legal, news and business information and tailored applications. Its online services combine searchable access to over three billion documents from thousands of sources. A member of Reed Elsevier plc, LexisNexis is headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, USA and does business in 100 countries with 12,000 employees worldwide. The company offers an extensive range of products and customised tools that address job-specific and organisation-wide information needs, driving productivity and confident decision making.
In addition to LexisNexis at nexis.com and lexis.com for corporate,government, legal and association professionals, the company's diverse portfolio of products includes PR solutions for public relations practitioners; Risk Solutions including extensive public records capabilities and featuring the National Fraud Center for law enforcement and investigative professionals;LexisNexis Universe products for academic institutions; and the Directory of Corporate Affiliations and the Advertising Redbooks. LexisNexis was recently named one of KM World magazine's "Top 100 companies in knowledge management".
Endeavor Information Systems, based in Des Plaines, Illinois, was founded in September 1994. Over 950 academic and research libraries of every size have chosen Endeavor's high performance Voyager integrated library system and over 25 libraries have selected ENCompass. Endeavor offers a complete line of library solutions for traditional and digital collections.
For further information please contact Endeavor Information Systems Inc., 84 Theobald's Road, London, WC1X 8RR, UK. Tel: +44 (0) 20 7611 4500; Fax: +44 (0)20 7611 4501; E-mail: info@endinfosys.com;URL: www.endinfosys.com
