Delivering a complete solution to research needs at the University of Murcia

The University of Murcia has over 30,000 students studying a range of disciplines, and two extensive libraries to cater to their knowledge needs, with over half a million books and 10,000 scientific journals, making it an important center of education on the west coast of Spain.

Delivering a wide range of resources for their multidisciplinary requirements, the university offers state-of-the-art installations and services.

The university purchased their first ProQuest product in 2010 with the introduction of the comprehensive business databaseProQuest Centralto enhance their business resources for students. Antonia Angosto Castro from the University said about the purchase of ProQuest Central that the “database and multidisciplinary full text is the biggest market and is the best tool for researchers."

Key to research for students is the discoverability of the resources available to them; the University decided to recently transition to ProQuest discovery tools to enable a smoother and more comprehensive solution. The implementation of theSummon^®Discovery service is designed to boost discovery and information literacy, thus making it an ideal tool for reinforcing the pivotal role of libraries to meaningful research and for delivering users’ results.

Antonia stated, “We analyzed the main discovery services and ProQuest was the best quality/price offered in the market. The Summon discovery tool allows for searches on all the resources of the collection either electronic or paper; it has a friendly interface and a very intuitive search for the user (based on the behavior of Google)." The addition of360 Linkwhich, according to Antonia, “enriches the search”, and provides researchers with the experience most reliable and direct access to full-text content using both index-enhanced direct linking (IEDL) and OpenURL linking.

In addition to Summon and 360 Link services, the university has chosenSyndetic Solutions^™. Syndetic Solutions^™provides a compelling discovery experience with enriched title detail to make it more engaging to the researcher and to aid discoverability and selection options. As collection browsing shifts from physical shelves to a digital environment, library discovery interfaces need to be more engaging. Offering more than 40 million unique descriptive data components, Syndetic Solutions™ enhances the library’s OPAC by delivering high-quality enriched book, ebook and media content details, with additional information including reviews and book cover images. It is also integrated into the users’ discovery experience through the Summon service.

To enhance the workload of those behind the scenes of the library and to assist in time saving, the university has also purchasedIntota Assessmentto assess the use of their e-resources. This enables the librarians to produce customized reports on their ebook usage to enable assessment including cost and usage analysis. This is all done electronically and decreases the time of manual input of information, which can be a lengthy process.

Delivering easy to access content to the students is a key focus for the university libraries, and the introduction of ebooks throughebrarywill enhance this across a range of subjects, most specifically for medical and business students. Having recently added to their facilities with a new medical and health studies campus, it was essential for the university to provide key resources to these students, and ebrary Medical was chosen. This investment in ebooks didn’t stop there -- ebrary Business was purchased to enhance the information already available through ProQuest Central.

Antonia talked about their purchase of content, saying that “Due to the varied choices at the UMU, the Library has acquired different databases from different disciplines, which have much use and are highly valued by our users."

In addition to content through ebooks, the university has also purchasedModern Languages Association International Bibliographyand from the American Psychological Association (APA) databases they have purchasedPsycARTICLES,PsycCRITIQUESandPsycINFO. Both of these content databases will provide students with key information on literature and philosophy. The MLA content covers literature from across the world from 1926 to present day in classified listing and subject index form for modern languages, literature, folklore and linguistics, whilst the APA Databases deliver a wealth of information for those in the field of psychology and associate areas.

Other products purchased by the University of Murcia include:
Econlit
Philosophers Index

Related Posts