Hamburg, Germany — October 10, 2018
The new platform will enable academic libraries across Switzerland to collaborate, improve services and efficiencies, reduce silos, and eliminate duplication of effort
Hamburg, Germany—October 10, 2018. Ex Libris®, a ProQuest company, is pleased to announce that the Swiss Library Service Platform A.G. (SLSP) has opted to base Switzerland’s new national library service for academic universities on the Ex Libris Alma® library services platform, with the Ex Libris Primo® solution providing discovery and delivery services to users.
The decision will see over 600 libraries across 130 institutions move from the Aleph®, Intota®, and Virtua library systems to the Alma platform and from the Summon®, SFX, and EBSCO Discovery Service™ tools to the Primo solution.
To be able to create a national platform and offer sophisticated network services, you need a library services platform that is able to support high-level services.
SLSP was formed by the merger of the six library networks that serve the Swiss academic community in the German, French, and Italian language regions. With the new library service center, the current cooperation within each language region will be raised to the national level, the duplication of work and library resources across the country will be reduced, and institutions that were previously served by smaller networks will continue to benefit from state-of-the-art services in the long term.
Project Manager for System Integration Jürgen Küssow said, “To be able to create a national platform and offer sophisticated network services, you need a library services platform that is able to support high-level services, such as national collaboration on metadata, and granular services, such as local management of print and electronic resources. Alma offers us just this combination and will help us increase efficiencies and facilitate members’ collaboration on joint projects and eventually enable libraries to provide more comprehensive services to the library end-user.”
Ofer Mosseri, corporate vice president and general manager of Ex Libris EMEA, said, “SLSP is joining a global community of national and state-wide consortia, networks, and service centers that have chosen the Ex Libris Alma library services platform and Primo discovery tool to support member libraries of all sizes. We look forward to helping SLSP and its members to develop new and innovative services.”
About Swiss Library Service Platform A.G.
The Swiss Library Service Platform (SLSP) is the result of a project originated by swissuniversities (the Rectors’ Conference of Swiss Higher Education Institutions) under the auspices of the Scientific Information: Access, Processing and Storage program. The aim of the project is to provide a central service platform for Switzerland’s academic libraries, based on a centrally operated new-generation library system, the application of uniform standards and norms, and meaningful governance and organizational structure.
SLSP comprises fifteen shareholding institutions from the Swiss higher education community. Its service platform, which will serve more than 130 member institutions by 2021, will help academic libraries throughout Switzerland gear themselves more specifically toward individual customer needs via a more efficient use of their resources. The central solution offered will replace and be more cost effective overall than today’s decentralized individual solutions and, furthermore, will ensure a seamless and cross-institutional provision of information for all stakeholders. The result will be a reduction of the overall expenditures at the national level, integration, collaboration, and, thus, improved access to relevant services and information services.
For more information, see https://blogs.ethz.ch/slsp/organisation-et-structure/
About Ex Libris
Ex Libris, a ProQuest company, is a leading global provider of cloud-based solutions that enable institutions and their individual users to create, manage, and share knowledge. In close collaboration with its customers and the broader community, Ex Libris develops creative solutions that increase library productivity, maximize the impact of research activities, enhance teaching and learning, and drive student mobile engagement. Ex Libris serves over 7,500 customers in 90 countries. For more information, see our website and join us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
