Jerusalem, Israel — March 13, 2008. Ex Libris Group today announced the successful integration of "About this book" pages from Google Book Search service into Ex Libris products. Using a new "viewability" application programming interface (API) supported by Google Book Search, library patrons can now enhance their findings with Google Book Search features such as full text, book previews, cover thumbnails, and a mashup from Google Maps linking pages in a book describing a specific place to its location on the world map. Use of this "viewability" API has been added to the Ex Libris Primo discovery and delivery solution, SFX context-sensitive link resolver, and the Aleph and Voyager integrated library systems.
Libraries running Primo now display a link from an item’s detailed view to Google Book Search "About this book" pages when such pages exist. SFX will feature a new Google Book Search target, which will alert users when results from Google Books are available for OpenURL book requests and will link to these results. Links to "About this book" pages will also appear in the full display of a record in Aleph and either the brief or full view in Voyager if there is a match between the results in one of these integrated library systems and Google Book Search.
Ex Libris and several of its customers collaborated closely to develop and implement this feature in their libraries. In less than one week, Ex Libris customer sites—including Kansas State University, the University of Iowa, the University of Texas at Austin, and Universita degli Studi di Padova in Italy—went live with this exciting new service.
"The integration of Google Book Search into our Primo implementation provides our users with a richer interface to library resources and also demonstrates Ex Libris’ continued commitment to interoperability and open standards," comments Paul Soderdahl, director of library information technology at the University of Iowa. "We were impressed with how quickly this moved from idea to implementation. Just one week after we agreed to take part in the pilot, we already had the link in place. We plan to add this service as a target in our SFX service as well."
"The extensible, open design of our products reflects our strategy of enabling libraries to offer their users the services they expect, as soon as such services become available," explains Nancy Dushkin, vice president of marketing at Ex Libris. "We were very pleased to collaborate closely with our customers and Google Book Search in implementing this service in such a quick time frame."
See this Google Book Search service at work at these institutions:
- University of Iowa
- Kansas State University
- University of Texas at Austin
- Università degli Studi di Padova
About Ex Libris
Ex Libris is a leading provider of automation solutions for academic libraries. Offering the only comprehensive product suite for electronic, digital, and print materials, Ex Libris provides efficient, user-friendly products that serve the needs of libraries today and will enable them to transition into the future. Ex Libris maintains an impressive customer base consisting of thousands of sites in more than 70 countries on six continents.
Dedicated to developing creative solutions in close collaboration with our customers, Ex Libris enables academic, national, and research libraries to maximize productivity and efficiency and, at the same time, greatly enhance the user experience. By empowering patrons to discover and obtain the information they need, libraries ensure their position as the bridge to knowledge.
