SirsiDynix created eResource Central as a new product designed to integrate electronic and print content for both library management and patron access. The initiative to develop eResource central was first announced in January 2012. (See the March and June issues of Smart Libraries Newsletter for more detailed information.) The basic concepts behind eResource Central include providing a cloud-based repository to facilitate globally the management of electronic content, such as e-book collections, but in a way that can be integrated and discovered through each library's local ILS and discovery environment. This arrangement avoids much of the redundancy involved when each library manages e-book collections individually.
eResource Central operates with both of the strategic ILS products offered by SirsiDynix, Symphony and Horizon, through the Web Services add-on available for both products. It can be accessed through the family of interface products, dubbed by the company as “BLUE Cloud” that includes:
- Enterprise discovery interface,
- Portfolio, an enhanced version of Enterprise that includes digital asset management capabilities,
- BookMyne, the company's interface product for mobile devices, and • Social Library, a native Facebook application.
The company reports that eResource Central will be available to all its customers that have implemented one of the BLUE Cloud interfaces, approximately 750 SirsiDynix customer sites. The SirsiDynix eResource Central product aims to greatly simplify the discovery and downloading of e-books by library patrons and to ease the work for libraries in managing these collections. It has been designed to work with any e-book platform with the APIs needed for the integration. Until now, eResource Central has been working with freely available e-book collections such as those available through the Open Library (http:// openlibrary.org ) and Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org ).
SirsiDynix has now completed work with Baker & Taylor to integrate the Axis 360 digital media collection and management platform into eResource Central. Axis 360 offers a collection of over 300,000 titles from which libraries can select to add to their collections of electronic materials.
The arrangement with Baker & Taylor is not exclusive. SirsiDynix reports that it plans similar integration capabilities with other e-book providers in the future.
