As you may know, for the past eighteen months, we have been indexing in Primo Central a number of the EBSCO databases. EBSCO has now changed their strategy and will no longer permit third-party discovery services to load and index their content. Therefore, starting 1st January 2011 we will cease hosting of the EBSCO content in the Primo Central Index. EBSCO will, however, permit our use of a specialized API to search the EBSCO content ‘just-in-time’. - Kirsten

Since our initial agreement with EBSCO in June 2009, we have made significant progress in working directly with many publishers and other aggregators to dramatically increase the content in the Primo Central Index. In addition we recently reached agreement with Gale whereby their databases in Primo Central will now be available to all, regardless of subscription. Since there is a considerable overlap between some of Gale’s and EBSCO’s collections, EBSCO subscribers will benefit considerably from Gale’s consent to open up their data. Furthermore, Gale’s move indicates the general trend of information providers of enabling their data through multiple distribution channels and we are delighted to witness this change. - Kirsten

Based on a recent analysis of the Primo Central content, we cover, through other channels, over 90% of the data provided by the current EBSCO content loaded in the Primo Central Index. Furthermore, of the small number of titles exclusively available from EBSCO, none of these appears on the list of the 5,000 most used journals, based on SFX logs, and only three appear on the list of the 10,000 most used journals. - Kirsten

We are currently finalizing the details of the new arrangement with EBSCO for ‘just-in-time’ search and will update you as we progress on this. However, we believe that EBSCO’s decision to withdraw their content from the Primo Central Index does not best serve your user’s interests. We therefore strongly encourage you to add your voices directly to those of the ELUNA and IGELU steering committees in requesting that EBSCO reverse their decision and enable their data for indexing. - Kirsten

Ah, ok. That doesn't affect 360 Search, because it's a pure federated search product with no harvesting. But this means that Summon is going to be cut off too. - DJF

holeeeee crap. - jambina

Yeah, the EBSCO databases are still available through MetaLib (EL's federated search). But not being in the discover layer may well do a number on use stats, and if those are bad enough then the state-wide agreements will start to matter less. - Kirsten

my comment on this has disappeared? basically mentioning summon and Ebsco being the new evil empire - Christina Pikas

Could someone offer a TL:DR version? The reference desk is poppin' this morning. - Andy

PRIMO harvests database content into it's central index. EBSCO has cut them off, but it still allows federated searching in realtime. (considering how EBSCO has been cutting off other vendors from hosting content, this doesn't actually surprise me.) - DJF

Christina: You commented on the one in my feed; I reposted to LSW. Apologies for the confusion. - Kirsten

Craptastic. Seriously. We just got 360 Search and are considering Summon. It seems that vendors like EBSCO will defend their damned information silos to the bitter end. Let's all send EBSCO email that say, "Save the time of the user", shall we? - maʀtha

Martha, EBSCO's current dick move shouldn't affect 360 Search, because 360 doesn't harvest. I'm seeing HUGE problems with Search 360 that have nothing to do with EBSCO. I suspect soembody at Serials Solutions spilled their coffee on a computer or soemthing. - DJF

Yes, I wasn't being clear in my carping. I'm thinking about how this EBSCO effects everyone with Summon or who might get Summon (in addition to everyone with Primo). - maʀtha

Are any other libraries reporting problems with 360 Search? - maʀtha

Wait, does anyone have Primo Central yet? This is a fraction of Primo users, no? We have Primo for discovery, but still use Metalib for federated search, so this doesn't affect us. - Meg V. Meg

We have it Meg, but I don't know how many libraries are using it. It's still fairly new, I think--our timing was such that we implemented Primo and Primo Central at the same time. Metalib is still in there too, so we do still have access to EBSCO databases. But Metalib is so much slower than Primo Central, I'm worried about how this is going to play out here. People were just getting used to our new interface. - Kirsten

liking so I can bookmark this. We are a completely ex libris shop now so this will definitely affect us. - Elizabeth Brown

It won't affect Summon users as the content harvested direct from the publisher not the indexer, e.g. EBSCO. Summon has around 97% of 'EBSCO' ft content but has never harvested EBSCO - Graham Stone

Meg, we're in the process of setting up Primo Central. We got an email from Ex Libris explaining that we can activate a whole bunch of databases that we don't subscribe to that cover the EBSCO holdings. Then SFX kicks in to locate the article in EBSCO. It's an awkward workaround until the APIs are available. - Chris Z.

Interesting! - Meg V. Meg

Is "just in time" federated search? - María Milagros Fernández

I just want to echo Graham Stone, above. Summon (and ExLibris) are already doing end-around work bypassing the "ease" of importing EBSCO indexing. I think this will ultimately backfire in EBSCO's face as their products get marginalized and their locked-in EDS customers become their only customers. - awd

If EBSCO/ProQuest/ExLibris start making exclusive indexing deals with major academic publishers, then you can worry. For now, it's just one dog marking a tree that every other dog has marked as well. - Royce's favorite Anna

saw an EBSCO demo for their EDS product last week and the way that the VP was talking they have a few exclusive deals with vendors and publishers that no one else does. He said one going to be announced at some big engineering conference in a few weeks. - Sir Shuping is just sir

I'm with Aaron and Anna on this one - the workarounds are there, so until they have exclusive indexing deals, well....They do tout their indexing as superior, of course, but still. - ~Courtney F

I think when publishers start seeing libraries cancel subscriptions because the titles aren't in their discovery systems, they might reconsider the exclusive deals that seemed so tantalizing now. - Royce's favorite Anna

No use = dropped subscriptions at MPOW... If it isn't indexed in a discovery system there won't be any use. Of course, I'm still working on selling the priority of a unified index as a discovery layer. - awd

So glad we don't have Primo. The UMN does, but not us. - maʀtha