Library evolution, trends and the road ahead from the EBSCO lens

2.1.Evolution of library search

The end-user experience in search has seen tremendous change in the last three decades. The OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog) emerged in the early 1980s to provide online access to discovery of the library catalog for end-users. The OPAC facilitated search of metadata for print books and journals, and also presented circulation status. Libraries offered a separate search of paper indexes to locate articles within journal issues. Between the mid-1990s and 2010 search became fragmented as many new search tools emerged, including:

While each of these services represented an improvement to the previous method of locating the materials they included, the combination of all of the services together resulted in it being a difficult task to search all materials available in a library. Multiple federated search platforms were created to attempt to address the challenge of electronic content retrieval in libraries. These platforms were generally found to be slow, presented a confusing experience to end-users, and lacked long-term viability due primarily to limitations of the technology at that time. In this period, Google proliferated, creating a user expectation that the library should be able to provide a ‘single search’ of all content that the library could make available to them.

2.2.Emergence of discovery

Discovery services made their initial appearance around 2008 and provide a single search box to the library’s entire collection. EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) became EBSCO’s core technology offering focusing on meeting the needs of different users. There is a lot to consider in a discovery service, including the user interface, the content that can be incorporated, the relevance and value ranking of content, the ability to tailor the solution for specific research needs, and the ability to use APIs to interoperate with the Integrated Library System (ILS). Importantly, each of these affects the end-user experience. We see EDS as the culmination for EBSCO of more than two decades of work for a company where data, search, retrieval and access are core competencies.

Discovery must cater to different researchers and accomplish a variety of objectives. The general researcher (undergraduate) is different than the sophisticated user (graduate student or advanced researcher). What’s more, users today expect a Google-like experience and expect the service to retrieve the most relevant results for every query. Users also want the ability to browse by subject and discipline as well as easily locate “known items” (items they become aware of via different methods/services).

EDS features a very sophisticated relevance-ranking algorithm to deliver the right content to the right users for each search. The interface also facilitates personalization of search results by subject domain and retention of a user’s search history. Abstracting & Indexing services play a critical role in supporting a personalized end-user experience. These services enable the leveraging of abstract/index data within the relevance ranking algorithm, as well as the mapping of terms across multiple thesauri. Of course, in order for data discovery to be successful, the service requires quality metadata; without this metadata, content is not discovered. But metadata in and of itself will not make a discovery service strong. The reality is that while metadata is critical for quality discovery, there is far more to it – from relevance-ranking algorithms and known-item searching to mapping thesauri from specialized indexes to the concepts leveraged by undergrads. In the age of discovery, with billions of potential records to discover, there has never been a time when precision in results has been more critical to the success and perception of the library.

Finally, integration is key. The discovery service must interoperate with other applications in the library’s ecosystem to facilitate collaboration across institutions and people. Through interoperability and integration, libraries enjoy improved workflows and enhanced access to research data. It is one thing to provide choice, but it’s another to truly optimize that choice and support library decisions – regardless of the vendor they choose. We believe that the future of library services will be one based on interoperable components such that libraries can choose the best of each component in their end-to-end service chain (back-office to end-user) and know that these services will be optimized through vendor partnerships and collaboration. No single vendor has all of the services needed, and no publisher provides all the content. Partnership is critical to supporting library decisions, and those that don’t take part could be left behind.

Above all, and perhaps the most important aspect in the advent of discovery, is placing the USER at the forefront of library decisions. In studying library strategic plans, we see that these plans are dominated by goals related to user success. But for years, back-end management systems have dominated the library infrastructure. Discovery services, combined with collections dominated by electronic resources, and the advent of open source services are changing this dynamic. When the focus is on the experience provided to end-users, libraries are positioned to succeed. Of course, librarians remain the most valuable resource in every library. But by building around discovery, we are now in a position to maximize the value of the work that every librarian does, to have a greater direct impact on the user. In the end, library success is about user success.

2.3.Responding to industry trends

EBSCO follows certain principles in taking advantage of or influencing industry trends. Foremost, we must identify and eliminate ‘solution compromises’ that customers are accepting. For example, poor linking from secondary databases to full-text databases and e-journal articles was a “solution compromise” before we “improved the solution’ by offering secondary and full-text databases on the same platform, with seamless linking from abstracts in the A&I database to the corresponding article in the full-text database. As we evolve and improve EBSCOhost/EDS, we keep our customer’s “wish list” in mind and look for ways to “improve the solution”.

When considering the above, “economics” rules. Simply put, we’ve found that when one offers a slightly better solution for less money, customers buy. However, we see it as being better to offer a significantly-improved solution for the same price. When designing new products or business models, it is critical to insure that all parties have an economic incentive to participate over the long run. Long-term partnerships are more important than short-term gain and interest “alignment” is the key to successful long-term partnerships.

Taking advantage of industry trends means looking at both user behavior and business models and abiding by the principles of improving rather than changing user behavior:

3.1.Short-term loan vs. inter library loan (ILL) vs. e-book purchase: Time of experimentation/transition

Fig. 1.

Short-term loan. (Colors are visible in the online version of the article; http://dx.doi.org/10.3233/ISU-150771.)

Perhaps there is no single model that has grown, come under scrutiny, and then declined as quickly as short-term loan (STL). The positives may be price and speed to access as part of a Patron-Driven Acquisition/Demand-Driven Acquisition (PDA/DDA) program, but the lack of collection building (libraries don’t own the book) and decrease in overall spending has put the model under pressure. We’ve seen this model slowly lose participation from publishers as many no longer support STL for new books. Publishers can’t afford to effectively lower the price of their books, which is the impact that STL is having in the market. Figure 1 provides a high level view of STL across the spectrum of “why” the model is used, but also “why” it is declining in availability.

3.2.Usage as key success driver

Usage is a key driver of success for online products. We like to say “revenue follows usage”. For example, decisions about renewals of journal subscriptions and databases are driven by the actual usage in the prior year. In addition, decisions about book content purchases have, to some extent, have become usage driven via Patron/Demand-Driven Acquisition (PDA/DDA). This model may make sense for some libraries, but in order for it to be sustainable, ways need to be found to ensure that book purchase levels remain constant, so as to avoid large price increases per book that may occur if PDA results in less money being invested in books. The cost of producing a book doesn’t go down when unit sales decline, so prices will increase over time as publishers will obviously not able to produce unprofitable books over the long term.

3.3.Business models for library management systems

The business models for library management systems are also evolving. With the move away from on-premise to cloud-based solutions, we’re moving from an upfront purchase and annual service contract to an annual subscription fee model (Software as a Service – SaaS). We are also moving from Library Management Systems (ILS) that have a forced coupling of discovery with those systems to interoperable sources that allow libraries to choose the ILS and discovery service which they prefer, allowing for optimization of library choice through partnerships. This approach lets libraries evaluate all components and determine what is best for them. When evaluations do not take place, inevitably, concerns and difficulties arise. Now we are seeing this type of choice come to the forefront through recent consolidation of book ordering tools. Companies like EBSCO are working closely with competing vendors to ensure that each library can select its vendor of choice.

3.4.Library workflows

Fig. 2.

Library workflow value chain.

Figure 2 illustrates how we see the life-cycle for resource management.

EBSCO is committed to supporting the librarian’s information life-cycle from selection through ordering, resource management, discovery, access, and analysis. Figure 3 below highlights the EBSCO product suite across the information life-cycle value chain, after our acquisition of YBP Library Services.

Fig. 3.

Information management life-cycle. (Colors are visible in the online version of the article; http://dx.doi.org/10.3233/ISU-150771.)

EBSCO has partnered with most major ILS vendors, both proprietary and open source, to facilitate ILS integration within the resource management life-cycle. In fact, while the above is an “EBSCO-centric” view of our proprietary resources in these areas, EBSCO “Open” enables a true collaborative environment and truly supports the resources and technologies that libraries elect to use. We are working to try to avoid the situation where Library A has a strong end-to-end infrastructure because it happened to select the “right” mix of services, while Library B has a less-than-optimized solution because it has a mix of services that may not be optimized due to lack of partnership among the vendors they have selected. Our approach is to encourage vendors to embrace this approach to attain what we must achieve – libraries serving their users successfully.

4.1.Market consolidation

The market has consolidated over the last thirty years, and this will continue. Consolidation is driven by many factors including economies of scale, technology, merging of functions within the value chain, venture capital, and private equity investments. This trend impacts all players – publishers, database producers, aggregators, agents, library automation vendors.

Many of the larger companies in the library market are owned by private equity firms. We are concerned that this has the potential to stifle innovation if the company becomes more focused on the owner’s exit strategy than on innovating for the benefit of libraries.

EBSCO has remained private, striving to maintain its entrepreneurial spirit and focus on innovation while growing. As a private company, EBSCO can focus on “improving the solution” and investing in long-term growth. In the end, no matter what our role is in the library industry (aggregator, publisher, consortium director, individual librarian, etc.), we all want the same thing – to see libraries become not just valued and trusted entities, but to become indispensible. As we approach our decisions, we do so with this idea in mind. This is not an overnight process in most cases. We are grateful that we are a company in a position to take this long-term approach. We are able to re-invest profits back into our business to improve existing products and create new services. It is undoubtedly a luxury for us as EBSCO employees, but moreover for the libraries that we serve.

4.2.EBSCO principles

At EBSCO we strive to improve and continue to grow; and, to do so, we ask our employees to abide by the following principles:

EBSCO continues to grow, and as such we are seen, rightfully so, as a large company. But we were certainly not always a big company. The single biggest reason for our success is the people who work for us. We employ hundreds of librarians, technologists, editorial experts, customer support, and many others who care a great deal about what they do. We have become a large company because of the commitment, care, and attention to detail that all of these individuals put into their work.