[WEB4LIB] RE: Meta-Search engines

[Michael Kaplan]

By and large, I think vendors should refrain from posting to lists since
their postings are invariably biased.  However, since our competitor
specifically invited us to respond, we believe we should set the record
straight regarding our products.

Specifically, this message is in response to the current thread on
Meta-Search engines written by Karim Boughida (Endeavor) wherein the comment
was made on Endeavor’s ENCompass product that “...I don’t think we have a
real competitor. Among perceived competitors we have SFX. SFX is a
proprietary reference-linking product.”

Let me say up-front I am the Director for Product Management for Ex Libris
(USA), Inc., so I have a stake in setting the record straight. On the other
hand, many of you know that I spent 20+ years in 2 of the largest ARL sites
in the US and left Indiana University (where I was Director of Technical
Services) for Ex Libris only last February.  I believe very much in academic
discourse and integrity.

So why am I upset?  There is a mantra afoot among competitors to Ex Libris’
ALEPH500 and potential competitors to SFX that SFX is a ‘proprietary linking
product’. This is as far from the truth as one can get. SFX has been
specifically designed as an open product. (In general, see
http://www.sfxit.com/.) It will work with Ex Libris’ ALEPH500 system, but it
can also work with any other ILS system. To further underscore this fact,
when SFX was Beta tested, only one of the sites in the testing was an ALEPH
site, ALL other sites were using competitors' ILS systems!

But what makes SFX truly open and non-proprietary?  It is the very basis of
SFX’s linking protocols and syntax: the OpenURL.  (For a technical
explanation of the OpenURL, see
http://sfx1.exlibris-usa.com/OpenURL/openurl.html) Ex Libris has been
working assiduously with information providers and with standards
organizations to further define the OpenURL as an industry-wide standard.
(See http://www.sfxit.com/sfx2.html). Ex Libris has already begun
discussions with NISO to have the OpenURL considered a standard.

What is more, Ex Libris and the academic Beta test sites and information
providers with which it is working are supporting the OpenURL in preference
to proprietary standards (http://www.sfxit.com/sources.html).  SFX already
has agreements in place and works with the following organizations:

ArXiv.org
EBSCO
Institute of Physics
ISI
OCLC First Search
Ovid
SilverPlatter ERL
SLAC-SPIRES

More agreements are on the horizon.

What of the target end of the equation?  Ex Libris has configured SFX to
work with a large number of target providers or sites, best viewed at
http://www.sfxit.com/targets.html.

Beyond that, a larger number of publishers and content providers has already
agreed to adopt the OpenURL even in advance of any formal recognition of it
as an industry standard.  Clearly, we are not taking a “proprietary”
approach here.

More important in this thread, however, is Ex Libris’ MetaLib, another
product that works with systems supporting standards (and again, does not
require an ALEPH system as its basis). MetaLib is a portal that provides for
information discovery of MAB, MARC21, XML, EAD, Dublin Core, and TEI
resources. The product is now being tested in Europe (soon in the US) and is
being readied for installations around the world. Ex Libris made a conscious
decision to make MetaLib and SFX work with other systems and resources and
not to limit them to users of the ALEPH500 library management system.

Another Ex Libris’ product offering, DigiTooLibrary, will help libraries
create and manage their digital collections. One of the beauties of this
product, again, is that it can stand alone—it does not require an ALEPH
system to be in place. We call these “open systems” and that is where we don
’t see a lot of competition!

I don’t want to do a sales pitch here.  I invite you to visit our website
(www.exlibris-usa.com ) to obtain more information on these products. But I
do want to make sure that everyone is aware that not only are there
competitive offerings in the marketplace, but also that there are some truly
“NON-proprietary” offerings.  That means you have real, open choices.  We
invite you to do your own comparison and decide for yourself if there is a
“real competitor” available.

Michael Kaplan
Director of Product Management
Ex Libris (USA), Inc.
michael at exlibris-usa.com