NEWS

Ex Libris Endorses Global Open Metadata Initiatives

Harvard Library content to be made available
to the international Ex Libris customer community

Ex Libris® Group is pleased to announce that it will include the Harvard Library’s catalog records in the Ex Libris Alma Community Catalog, and Harvard’s Digital Access to Scholarship (DASH) article repository in the Primo Central Index of scholarly content. Endorsing the recommendations of the Alma Community Zone advisory group, Ex Libris will make the content from the Harvard Library open and available to the growing international community of Ex Libris customers.

The news from Harvard Library follows the October 2011 announcement by the Conference of European National Libraries (CENL) and Europeana, Europe’s digital library, that they are adopting CC0, a Creative Commons tool for waiving copyright protection, thus making the content of their 49-member national libraries available to the public and further supporting the recommendations of the Alma Community Zone advisory group. Ex Libris Alma and Primo provide an ideal platform for collaboration between libraries and the sharing of library content through open metadata principles, as exemplified by Harvard and the European consortia.

Oren Beit-Arie, Ex Libris chief strategy officer, commented: “As these recent announcements demonstrate, open metadata is an increasingly critical theme in the academic and research library community, representing a dramatic departure from the restricted models of the past. The growing number of initiatives around the world validates the strategy underpinning the Ex Libris next-generation library services, Primo and Alma. By providing open access to metadata and facilitating sharing, libraries can better achieve their goals of increasing efficiency in technical services, facilitating stronger collaboration, and developing innovative end-user services.”

Ex Libris applauds this move by Harvard and joins many in the library community in encouraging others to follow suit.

www.exlibrisgroup.com