ALA 2010 Midwinter Meeting: Ex Libris Beta Testing Primo Central

ALA 2010 Midwinter Meeting - American Library Association - Library Journal

By Mike Rogers -- Library Journal, 01/14/2010

• Product is a centralized index
• 14 beta partners involved
• Service provided in cloud computing environment

Ex Libris® Group January 14 announced the launch of Primo Central for beta testing at 14 partner institutions. Primo Central is a centralized index consisting of data harvested from primary and secondary publishers and aggregators. With it, the vendor said, “users simultaneously search locally managed collections and global e-content and receive search results that are blended into a single relevance-ranked list...[and]..."libraries can tailor the relevance ranking to ensure appropriate emphasis on their local collections.” Ex Libris provides Primo Central as a service, in a cloud computing environment.

When searching in their institution’s Primo interface, users in partner libraries will have seamless access to the Primo Central mega-aggregate of scholarly e-content. Jody Combs, assistant dean for information technology at Vanderbilt University, one of beta partner institutions, commented: “Not only will Primo Central draw attention to materials that some of our users were not aware of previously—thus improving return on our investment in e-collections—but it clearly indicates the origin of the materials for the benefit of those users who value specific scholarly collections." 

Using faceted categorization to select a particular collection, a researcher can make the result list show only items from that collection. "The beauty," said Combs, "is that the researcher can perform all these tasks from within the Primo interface."