For users without access to the real thing, Udini delivers a research library in the cloud

May 7, 2012 (ANN ARBOR, Mich.) — Knowledge powerhouse ProQuest is launching an inventive new research service that provides individuals with access to premium content and cutting edge tools. Instant and on-demand, Udini™ bundles an extraordinary range of information, including peer-reviewed and trade journal articles, dissertations, international newswires, newspapers, magazines and more from thousands of publishers in a comprehensive cloud-based workflow management tool designed for individual users. For knowledge workers without access to research libraries, Udini™ provides unprecedented ease for finding and using the highest quality information for professional projects. For publishers with already-strong academic distribution, Udini™ opens a trusted and compelling new channel to reach an under-served group of users who want and need their content.

“Research libraries play a critical role in our knowledge economy, but not everyone who needs serious content is connected to a scholarly library. Research for these unaffiliated users is confusing and inefficient unless they know exactly what they’re looking for. Premium information — when it’s accessible at all — is distributed behind many different paywalls all over the Web,” said Rich LaFauci, Senior Vice President and General Manager, ProQuest Research Solutions. “Udini™ curates and licenses high-quality content and makes it incredibly easy to discover, acquire and use. The entire service is crafted from the end-user’s perspective – from the content to the tools to the commerce model. It’s simple, easy and flexible.”
Proprietary content from market-leading publishers such as Springer, Nature Publishing Group, the Economist, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the World Health Organization, Cambridge University Press and 3,800 others is already slated to be available through Udini™. The fast-growing service currently encompasses some 150 million full-text articles as well as the highly regarded ProQuest dissertations archive, the world’s most consulted collection of intellectual property and emerging research from universities. Udini™ combines the kind of information resources offered by scholarly libraries with the intuitive search and content management of a cloud-based web service.

Udini™ serves growing ranks of independent researchers, from freelancers, to workers in organizations without their own libraries, to unaffiliated authors. These users can search and then add desired content to the Udini™ cloud-based project organization and management tool, which also welcomes information from personal libraries and the open web, enabling them to capture their projects’ whole research file in one always-accessible space. All content types share an easy-to-read display that allows note taking and highlighting. Purchase plans are flexible – by the article, by the month or by the project – and some content is free. There’s no cost to use or store projects in Udini™.

ProQuest is continuously developing the Udini™ service, including the exploration of new access models such as subscriptions for alumni associations. To learn more, visit udini.proquest.com.
About ProQuest (www.proquest.com)
ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company has forged a 70-year reputation as a gateway to the world’s knowledge – from dissertations to governmental and cultural archives to news, in all its forms. Its role is essential to libraries and other organizations whose missions depend on the management and delivery of complete, trustworthy information.
ProQuest’s massive information pool is made accessible in research environments that accelerate productivity, empowering users to discover, create, and share knowledge.
An energetic, fast-growing organization, ProQuest includes the ProQuest®, Bowker®, Dialog®, ebrary®, and Serials Solutions® businesses and notable research tools such as the RefWorks® and Pivot™ services, as well as its’ Summon® web-scale discovery service. The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with offices around the world.

Genealogy information giant joins with partners to make newly released data easy to search

May 4, 2012 (ANN ARBOR, Mich.) — ProQuest is joining forces with Archives.com, FamilySearch International, findmypast.com and the National Association of Records and Archives in the 1940 US Census Community Project, a collaborative effort to index the contents of the newly released U.S. 1940 Census. ProQuest will add the new census content to its acclaimed HeritageQuest® Online service, one of libraries’ most valued and widely used genealogical tools. ProQuest’s participation in the project provides major financial support to the indexing effort, which enables all its partners to ingest content more affordably, providing timely delivery to their users.
“Genealogists and local historians – professionals and amateur enthusiasts – rely on many ProQuest archives and tools, especially HeritageQuest Online. We’re committed to continually improving the results family historians earn from our products and census data is an absolute goldmine,” said Chris Cowan, VP Publishing. “This consortium of colleagues is an ideal way for us all to share costs and labor to get one of the most talked-about new content sets into use fast.”
The 1940 U.S. census records were released by the National Archives on April 2 after a mandatory 72-year waiting period. Its 3.8 million pages include names, addresses and family members of virtually every one of the country’s 132 million citizens, an information bonanza for the burgeoning numbers of Americans who are tracing family trees. While the data is available on the 1940 Census website, it isn’t searchable by name.

The 1940 U.S. Census Community Project aims to create simple searching of the census by indexing its contents. It’s a labor-intensive task that the project partners are tackling by organizing teams of volunteers who are turning the thousands of census pages into searchable records linked to digital page images. Each organizational member behind the project will then ingest both images and indexed records in their services, making the content easily accessible.
“Having the census data available in multiple products is important because it broadens both availability and pathways,” said Mr. Cowan. “No matter which tool you like to use, you’ll have access to this important information.”
ProQuest’s HeritageQuest Online Service is available through more than 7,000 libraries – both inside buildings and online via the library’s website – including 20 statewide portals. The service is popular among genealogists for its search results that can be sorted in multiple ways – by first name, last name, age, gender, place, and so on. The sorting feature allows searchers to zero-in on family members for which they have scant information and also find family members whose original records include errors, such as misspelled names.
Libraries whose genealogy groups would like to participate in the indexing of the 1940 Census data can visit the1940census.com for information. For more information about HeritageQuest Online or any ProQuest genealogy resource, visit www.proquest.com.

About ProQuest (www.proquest.com)
ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company has forged a 70-year reputation as a gateway to the world’s knowledge – from dissertations to governmental and cultural archives to news, in all its forms. Its role is essential to libraries and other organizations whose missions depend on the management and delivery of complete, trustworthy information.
ProQuest’s massive information pool is made accessible in research environments that accelerate productivity, empowering users to discover, create, and share knowledge.
An energetic, fast-growing organization, ProQuest includes the ProQuest®, Bowker®, Dialog®, ebrary®, and Serials Solutions® businesses and notable research tools such as the RefWorks® and Pivot™ services, as well as its’ Summon® web-scale discovery service. The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with offices around the world.

About the 1940 U.S. Census Community Project (the1940census.com)

The 1940 U.S. Census Community Project is a web-based, national service project with the goal of creating as soon as possible a free, high quality online index linked to the complete set of census images. The index will allow the public to easily search every person found in the census and view digital images of the original census pages. The collection will be available online for free to the general public at 1940census.archives.gov,Archives.com, FamilySearch.org, and findmypast.com and by ProQuest through its HeritageQuest Online service. through public libraries. All of these organizations are respective website sponsors of the community project. Archives.com, findmypast.com, and ProQuest will make substantial financial contributions to make the 1940 U.S. census online name index possible and will work with the nonprofit organization FamilySearch to bring additional new historic records collections online—making even more highly valued family history resources available to the entire genealogical community.

Seasoned executive brings global perspective to leading information company

May 1, 2012 (ANN ARBOR, Mich.) — Information firm ProQuest has appointed Kellie Teal-Guess as Senior Vice President, Human Resources. As part of the ProQuest Senior Leadership Team and reporting to CEO Kurt Sanford, Teal-Guess will be responsible for setting the strategy for development and management of the company’s global talent resources.
“Kellie’s experience working and leading in a global technology and services organization along with her exceptional leadership and management capabilities make her an ideal fit for ProQuest,” said Mr. Sanford. “We are an ambitious organization. Development of our employees and recruitment of energetic new talent is essential to reaching our goals and helping our customers reach theirs. I’m delighted to have Kellie on our team and I am excited about the role she will play in shaping our future.”
Teal-Guess joins ProQuest from Dell Corporation in Austin (TX), where she was Executive Director, Human Resources, supporting more than 18,000 employees in its global Services Delivery group. Over an eight-year span at Dell, Teal-Guess worked in successively more strategic and advanced roles, overseeing all core human resource operations as well as key initiatives – including organizational effectiveness, acquisition integration, and talent development. Prior to Dell, she held positions in human resource management at Foodmaker, Inc., and Six Flags Theme Parks.
Kellie Teal-Guess holds MBA, MPA, and BA degrees from the University of Texas. She will be based in ProQuest’s Ann Arbor headquarters.
About ProQuest (www.proquest.com)
ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company has forged a 70-year reputation as a gateway to the world’s knowledge – from dissertations to governmental and cultural archives to news, in all its forms. Its role is essential to libraries and other organizations whose missions depend on the management and delivery of complete, trustworthy information.
ProQuest’s massive information pool is made accessible in research environments that accelerate productivity, empowering users to discover, create, and share knowledge.
An energetic, fast-growing organization, ProQuest includes the ProQuest®, Bowker®, Dialog®, ebrary®, and Serials Solutions® businesses and notable research tools such as the RefWorks® and Pivot™ services, as well as its’ Summon® web-scale discovery service. The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with offices around the world.

One hundred years ago today, Titanic launched on her doomed maiden voyage. As interest in that voyage surges again in response to the centennial, ProQuest is alerting journalists to opportunities for researchers to explore more about the ship’s history using ProQuest’s deep web resources. ProQuest.com features a mix of articles from early 20th century journals and newspapers that capture the immediacy of the event and remind researchers of the unique resources that are available through library gateways. For those whose appetites are whetted, Periodicals Online Archive is available for free month-long access. Take a look at the San Francisco Chronicle’s online news hub to read the press release: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/04/10/prweb9384870.DTL

Over 4,100 new e-books, including 1,800 from Wiley, to be added to Academic Complete

April 10, 2012 – Palo Alto, CA, USA – To strengthen its new approach to strategic e-book acquisition based on three steps: Transition, Diversify, and Streamline™, ebrary®, a ProQuest business, is expanding its e-book selection across acquisition models.

More than 1,800 new e-books from Wiley and 2,300 new titles from publishers including Princeton University Press and World Scientific & Imperial College Press will be available in Academic Complete™, which will offer unlimited access to a growing selection of more than 75,000 quality titles. An additional 6,300 e-books from publishers such as MIT Press, Oxford University Press, and University of Illinois Press will be available through other ebrary models including patron driven acquisition, short-term loan, and perpetual archive. Titles can be ordered through ebrary as well as partners and book vendors such as YBP.

As libraries transition their budgets from print to digital books, diversifying acquisition models and streamlining the ordering process are key to achieving the greatest return on investment. A number of ebrary customers are benefitting from this approach.

“SJSU started with a subscription to ebrary’s Academic Complete, which is an affordable way to offer our students unlimited access to a broad base collection: Academic Complete has something for everyone,” said Carole Correa-Morris, Head of Acquisitions at San Jose State University. “We have also purchased e-books outright, including those chosen by our subject selectors and requested by faculty. Most recently, we have been examining our Academic Complete usage statistics to strategically expand our patron driven acquisition program. By focusing on higher use subjects, we can better determine which titles to add to our consideration pool and only purchase those that are used. Diversifying models makes sense financially, and by streamlining ordering through YBP we are able to work more efficiently.”

“Two converging trends are driving the need for strategic e-book acquisition: Libraries are investing a larger percentage of their book budgets in digital from print to meet a growing demand, and publishers are producing more books electronically,” said Kevin Sayar, President and General Manager of ebrary. “We will continue to work with publishers, librarians, and book vendors to develop an integrated e-book solution to serve the progressive needs of one very important common denominator: the researcher.”

For details about ebrary’s new approach to strategic acquisition as well as the ebrary platform, which offers robust research tools, a dedicated mobile iOS app, and the ability for libraries to upload and integrate their own digital repositories with DASH!™ (Data Sharing, Fast), visit www.ebrary.com.

About ebrary (www.ebrary.com)
ebrary helps customers acquire e-books strategically through a three step approach: Transition, Diversify and Streamline™. The company believes that by challenging the e-book status quo, organizations can effectively serve the diverse and growing needs of researchers and maximize their budgets. Founded in 1999, long before e-books were popular, ebrary is a ProQuest business located in Palo Alto, CA, USA.

Graduate works from one of Israel’s top research institutions will be discoverable by a global network of scholars

March 12, 2012 (ANN ARBOR, Mich.) — Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) has joined the thousands of research institutions worldwide that contribute to the acclaimed ProQuest® Dissertations and Theses database (PQDT), the world’s largest commercially available repository of graduate works. Through PQDT, a worldwide network of scholars will be able to discover BGU’s doctoral dissertations, further elevating the University’s profile as a pre-eminent research institution. In addition, the BGU contributions will enrich the diversity of content available to researchers through the database, which supports more than 200 million searches per year.
“ProQuest is actively expanding the international content in PQDT with very high quality partnerships such as the new agreement with Ben-Gurion University. BGU was a pioneer in digital dissemination for their graduate work in Israel and throughout the globe via their institutional repository,” said Marta Lee-Perriard, Publisher for International Theses & Dissertations, “More than ever before, world class research is the product of rich academic interchange that spans continents. We are excited about the potential to advance scholarship by surfacing these innovative graduate works alongside those of other leading institutions in PQDT.”
“This is an opportunity to increase the impact value of our students’ work. Many of their projects are at the cutting edge of today’s science,” said director of the Aranne Central Library Haya Asner.
Established in 1969 to bring development to the Negev desert, BGU is now a major center for teaching and research and includes the Kreitman School of Advanced Graduate Studies, as well as major research institutes such as the National Institute for Biotechnology in the Negev, the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research with its Albert Katz International School for Desert Studies and the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism.
To house its burgeoning research production, BGU built one of the first Israeli repositories for dissertations. Beginning in 2012, it will submit these works to PQDT. ProQuest expects to add hundreds of works from BGU to PQDT each year.
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses is the seminal repository of intellectual property and emerging research from the world’s great universities. Chosen by the United States Library of Congress as the official archive of American dissertations, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, whose precursor was begun in 1939, now encompasses more than one quarter of a billion pages, creating a unique, continually growing trove of emerging research and landmark works. Researchers rely on ProQuest Dissertations & Theses as both a source of enlightening information and as a pivotal component in making their own scholarly production available to the world’s intellectual communities. The archive is managed at ProQuest by a team of scholars and technologists, who combine their talents to make the archive accessible, reliable and supported by continually advancing technology.

About ProQuest (www.proquest.com)

ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company has forged a 70-year reputation as a gateway to the world’s knowledge – from dissertations to governmental and cultural archives to news, in all its forms. Its role is essential to libraries and other organizations whose missions depend on the management and delivery of complete, trustworthy information.
ProQuest’s massive information pool is made accessible in research environments that accelerate productivity, empowering users to discover, create, and share knowledge.
An energetic, fast-growing organization, ProQuest includes the ProQuest®, Bowker®, Dialog®, ebrary®, and Serials Solutions® businesses and notable research tools such as the RefWorks® and Pivot™ services, as well as its’ Summon® web-scale discovery service. The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with offices around the world.