At WiLS, we want to bring valuable information to our library partners, including information about the missions and big ideas of the vendors they may already do business with. Each month, WiLS will interview a vendor partner in order to bridge the gap and open the door to valuable collaborations. This month, we are delighted to share insights from Amanda Winseck, Sales Manager at EBSCO Information Services.
If you have any questions about this interview, or would like to suggest a vendor partner for us to interview in the future, contact Andrea Coffin at acoffin@wils.org or 414-979-9457.
Tell us about your company’s background. Headquartered in Ipswich, Massachusetts, EBSCO Information Services is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., a family-owned company since 1944. EBSCO has 65 years of experience providing cutting-edge technology and offering library resources to customers in academic, medical, K–12, public library, law, corporate, and government markets. EBSCO is the preeminent provider of online research content for libraries, including hundreds of research databases, historical archives, point-of-care medical reference, and corporate learning tools. The leading provider of electronic journals & books for libraries, EBSCO provides subscription management for more than 360,000 serials, including more than 57,000 e-journals, as well as online access to more than 550,000 e-books. In 2010, EBSCO introduced its EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) to institutions, which provides each institution with a comprehensive, single search box for its entire collection, offering unparalleled relevance ranking quality and extensive customization.
Why do you, personally, choose to work with libraries? Libraries have always been my place to explore beyond what I could see in front of me. I fell in love with Goodnight Moon, the Box Car Children series and so many more books that would take me away. I wanted to be the person that could draw the pictures that made the story come to life as I learned to read and understand the words on the page as a young reader into adulthood. The library was my place in school to find peace to study, prepare for exams, receive assistance with papers and there was always a librarian at the ready to guide me. Libraries are a part of my life and I am fortunate to be able to support them in my professional life as well.
What do you like to know about the libraries you work with? What helps you better understand their needs? I want to hear their stories and learn how the services from EBSCO can provide the resources to help them tell those stories. We need and want to hear it all –the success and the challenges. EBSCO continues to evolve as we listen to suggestions and feedback to improve and create resources to better serve the needs of today’s libraries. We will be launching a new service very soon that was very much driven by customer suggestions. It will contain high quality and popular magazine content, in a browsable format. I must say it is very rewarding to be a part of a company that can start from a suggestion and make a product come to life.
What big ideas are being worked on at your company? What problems are being solved? Because of our long history of providing online research services for libraries, we understand customers’ desire for more integrated solutions. As a result, we are emphasizing the importance of tight integration of products and services in order to heighten the overall value and benefit for customers and end users. In July 2013, the EBSCO Information Services and EBSCO Publishing divisions merged, and now operate as a single business under the name EBSCO Information Services. This merger facilitates more comprehensive integration of EBSCO’s many access and management tools which benefit our customers. We are also working on offering even greater economies of scale through more robust packages from EBSCO.
How can librarians become partners in product or training development? EBSCO has a team of more than 30 Training Specialists who provide online and onsite training for our customers around the world. These highly-qualified trainers work closely with librarians in their assigned regions to design customized training and implementation plans that meet their unique needs and requirements. Trainers partner closely with librarians to define training content, develop training outlines, agree on exercises and assessments, and share evaluation results. Librarians are invited to participate in facilitation as desired, often providing introductions to training modules. Bottom line, EBSCO encourages librarian involvement in training development. We believe this type of collaboration is vital to ensure effective training for end users.
Additionally, EBSCO is using contextual inquiry to better understand how today’s users conduct research and interact with technology. In the public library space, we are attempting to better understand how patrons want to consume library information including browse versus search & retrieve mentality, tablet usage and time of library usage. This information helps EBSCO with product development but we are also able to contribute significant information to the field of user research.
Do you have anything else you’d like to let our community know that isn’t covered here? EBSCO Information Services continues to distinguish itself as the leading provider of online resources for users in all areas. EBSCO has led the way in delivering a superior user experience for its customers, creating new types of content, adding content through acquisitions and providing the types of content users need, when they need it. EBSCO’s commitment to create more content, to enrich existing databases, and constantly provide new offerings makes it the leading online database provider and a model for the industry.