ProQuest Ebook Central™FAQ
Contents
1. UPGRADE
1.1 What will the upgrade process be like?
1.2 As an existing ebrary customer, what are the main benefits I will receive when I upgrade to Ebook Central?
1.3 As an existing EBL customer, what are the main benefits I will receive when I upgrade to Ebook Central?
1.4 Will I need to change my links in my OPAC?
1.5 Will I have to reload the ebrary and EBL MARC records I already have?
1.6 Will my library acronym or channel ID change?
1.7 Which browsers are supported by Ebook Central?
1.8 Will I have access to the same content?
1.9 Will there be any downtime when I upgrade?
1.10 Where can I find training on Ebook Central?
1.11 Have you sought feedback from librarians and patrons on the development of ProQuest Ebook Central?
2. COLLECTIONS & ACCESS
2.1 What about the ebooks that I’ve already acquired?
2.2 Will my current subscriptions continue in Ebook Central?
2.3 What access models will be available?
2.4 How can I prevent turnaways?
2.5 Will you continue to support STL?
2.6 How will STLs be issued in Ebook Central?
2.7 What are the DDA triggers in Ebook Central?
3. PROFILING
3.1 Will we be able to create or modify our own DDA profiles in Ebook Central?
3.2 Will my current ebrary profiles be available in Ebook Central?
3.3 Will my current EBL profiles be available in Ebook Central?
3.4 Who should I contact with questions regarding my profiles?
4. PATRON EXPERIENCE
4.1 Will my patrons still be able to access their saved ebooks?
4.2 Will my patrons have to sign in up front, like they do for EBL?
4.3 How will ebook availability be displayed to patrons?
4.4 What will the copy and print limits be?
4.5 Will I be able to brand and customize the Patron site?
4.6 What kind of accessibility support will be available? Will text to speech be supported?
4.7 How will Ebook Central work on mobile devices?
5. LIBRARY MANAGEMENT
5.1 Will my logins transfer on LibCentral?
5.2 Will there be any changes to how I get MARC records?
5.3 I use a discovery layer – are you working with them to ensure they have made any adjustments needed so things go smoothly when I upgrade to Ebook Central?
5.4 Will there be any changes to authentication?
5.5 What impact does the recent Coutts acquisition have on Ebook Central?
5.6 What will you be supporting for Consortia?
5.7 Will my ProQuest contacts change?
6. ACCOUNTS AND INVOICING
6.1 Are there any invoicing changes?
6.2 Will there be any changes to how I make payments?
6.3 What will happen to my existing ebrary or EBL deposit?
1. UPGRADE
1.1 What will the upgrade process be like?
You will be fully guided through your upgrade to Ebook Central. We’re staffed to fully support your transition. We’ll also have many resources available to you, such as live webinars, in-depth FAQ’s, training videos and LibGuides.
We’ll be flexible on timing and give you ample notification of any changes - giving you a suggested timeframe but also enabling you to make changes, given your situation. You will receive an email notifying you that you will upgraded approximately 4 weeks prior to your scheduled upgrade and a reminder 2 weeks before your upgrade.
Find more information on the upgrade process at:
1.2 As an existing ebrary customer, what are the main benefits I will receive when I upgrade to Ebook Central?
You will see a lot of exciting improvements as we bring the best of ebrary and EBL together in Ebook Central. Training and documentation will be provided to on all of the enhancements but here are just some key highlights.
The patron experience is enhanced. The new Patron interface builds on the ebrary Reader and Detail Page, launched in 2014, with new home page, catalog search and bookshelf features. There are additional search options, including series title, LCSH and download format, and patrons can refine their search results via easy-to-use filters. The new bookshelf displays the patron’s current downloads and loans, recently viewed books and their folders, provides new abilities to export all notes from books easily, cite sets of books, and share out info with other patrons.
Another significant enhancement is Ebook Central’s library administration portal – ProQuest LibCentral. LibCentral includes acquisition and administrative tools designed to meet your workflow needs, supporting all access models available on ebrary and EBL. You will be able to purchase titles with the streamlined shopping cart experience and additional currencies will be available. LibCentral provides you with new expenditure controls, including DDA, STL and mediation settings. There is also in-depth reporting available, including Expenditure, Title and Usage reports and continued support for COUNTER reports.
You’ll also have new options for MARC record delivery. In addition to the hand-catalogued high-quality MARC records that are available to you today, you will be able to access machine-generated Express MARC records for new titles that do not yet have Full MARC records.
1.3 As an existing EBL customer, what are the main benefits I will receive when I upgrade to Ebook Central?
You will see a lot of exciting enhancements and changes as we bring the best of ebrary and EBL together in Ebook Central.
Ebook Central provides a clean, modern design for your patrons and was designed to scale to a variety of devices. The new user interface for catalog search and bookshelf features has been developed with today’s researcher’s needs in mind, building on the success of the ebrary Reader and Detail Page, launched in 2014, which focused on streamlining experiences of reading, downloading, and search within book. Ebook Central has undergone frequent, iterative rounds of user testing with researchers and benefited from in-depth feedback from librarians through beta testing. In addition, the online reader was designed with the goal of achieving WCAG 2.0 Guidelines, AA conformance—a high bar for Accessibility support. And patrons using Ebook Central will be able tochoose from twelve languages in addition to English.
Ebook Central’s library administration portal, ProQuest LibCentral, will be familiar to you but you will see enhancements there as well. LibCentral supports all of the access models available on ebrary and EBL and offers new purchase options – subscriptions and upgrades. The COUNTER reports available in LibCentral will be compliant with COUNTER 4 release.
You will now be able to see your DDA Profiles in LibCentral and submit changes via the platform. If you manually change visibility on titles, your profile will recognize and maintain the visibility setting.
There are also new options for MARC record delivery. In addition to the machine-generated Express MARC records for titles that are available immediately on EBL today, you will be able to access hand-catalogued high-quality MARC records for most titles.
1.4 Will I need to change my links in my OPAC?
No! You will not be required to change any URLs for users to connect to Ebook Central.
We will be adding redirect technology to ensure that your existing links still work. This redirect functionality will be turned on for each customer, coinciding with their upgrade date, and the redirects will not expire for a minimum of five years. We will assess the need to extend the redirects before the end of the five year period and provide ample notification if any changes are planned.
1.5 Will I have to reload the ebrary and EBLMARC records I already have?
EBL and ebrary direct customers will not be required to reload your MARC records but you can choose to reload or overlay them if that is your preference.If you use a third party for your Discovery MARC records, please consult with them for their recommended strategy.
Ebook Central MARC records are available as hand cataloged Full records, or machine generated Express records, both are RDA compliant and available for your DDA collection and purchased ebooks. Full MARC is also customizable.
If you decide not to refresh your ebrary and EBL MARC records, you will be able to match your records using the EBL and ebrary document IDs which will be included in the Ebook Central MARC records.
If you choose to overlay or refresh your MARC records, you will be able to request Delete or Update files from your ebook Customer Relationship Manager. You may decide to manage this process according to holding type, and choose to overlay MARC for owned titles but reload your DDA MARC records. We will be able to provide Delete and Update files for different holding types so that you can manage the overlay process appropriately. You can continue to use the existing ebrary and EBL MARC records until you are ready to overlay or refresh.
Any new purchases or DDA additions will be provided in the new Ebook Central MARC format.
Please contact your ebook Customer Relationship Manager to discuss your MARC strategy.
1.6 Will my library acronym or channelID change?
For EBL customers, your Ebook Central Site ID will be the same as the acronym you had for EBL.
For ebrary customers, your Ebook Central Site ID will be the same as your ebrary channel ID, unless that ID is already in use on Ebook Central, or you have a reason you must change it.
For customers on both the ebrary and EBL platforms, your Ebook Central Site ID will be the same as your existing EBL acronym.
1.7Whichbrowsersare supported by Ebook Central?
Ebook Central supports a range of modern browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Microsoft IE 10, 11 and Edge. Microsoft is no longer supporting (not issuing security patches, etc.) older browsers as of January 2016. For details, see:
1.8 Will I have access to the same content?
In Ebook Central, you will have access to the same and even more content.
We know that when it comes to supporting research, content is key. ProQuest Ebook Central content offering is expanding and will include ebrary and EBL titles. We are not taking away any content that your library owns. And, of course, we will continue to add to our catalog.
By combining content from EBL and ebrary, we are able to offer the widest range of quality content available. You will have access to over 700,000 unique titles from over 600 publishers.
1.9Will there be any downtime when I upgrade?
We do not anticipate the need for scheduled downtime for most upgrades. Depending on your current library settings and configuration, we will determine if a discussion is warranted and you would be contacted well in advance with details.
1.10Where can I find training on Ebook Central?
There will be lots of resources available to help you learn about the new Ebook Central platform. You will be able to register for webinars on the Ebook Central patron interface, ProQuest LibCentral and Upgrade overview webinars. Videos on the patron interface will be available on ProQuest’s Training channel on YouTube. You will also find useful information in the Libguide, the Support Center, and help sections within Ebook Central.
- Training webinars:
- LibGuide:
- Videos:
- ProQuest Support Center:
- Ebook Central Upgrade page:
1.11Have you sought feedback from librarians and patrons on the development of ProQuest Ebook Central?
We firmly believe that frequent, iterative user testing makes for great user experiences, both for patrons and librarians. We have undertaken user testing with librarians and patrons throughout the development of Ebook Central and LibCentral and are currently seeking feedback via our beta and Preview Partner programs. Librarian and patron feedback is helping us to develop Ebook Central with a deep understanding of researcher and librarian needs and expectations.
2. COLLECTIONS & ACCESS
2.1 What about the ebooks that I’ve already acquired?
ProQuest Ebook Central will include all of your existing holdings across ebrary and EBL automatically. If you own an ebook in different access models on EBL and ebrary, you will own continue to own the ebook in all of those access models in Ebook Central.
2.2 Will my current subscriptions continue in Ebook Central?
Yes!Your current subscriptions will continue to be available in Ebook Central.
2.3 Whataccess modelswill be available?
Ebook Central will include all EBL and ebrary access models.
Ebook Central will include 1-user (previously SUPO in ebrary) and 3-user access models, where access is limited to a specific number of concurrent users. Unlimited access model will also be available with no restrictions on the number of concurrent users (previously MUPO in ebrary). The popular EBL Non-Linear access model will also be available. Non-Linear ebooks can be lent to any number of patrons concurrently. There is a set number of annual loan days for Non-Linear titles, usually 325 days, which renew on the purchase date.There are numerous settings available in LibCentral to help you manage access to the various access models.
In combination with the 1-user, 3-user and Non-Linear access models, our Extended Access features can prevent turnaways.
2.4 How can I prevent turnaways?
Ebook Central’s Extended Access features help you manage turnaways.
Extended Access is a set of rules on how to handle situations where the library has reached the maximum use on an owned title and another researcher needs it. The library can pre-determine whether to initiate a just in time short-term loan, upgrade, or purchase another copy. So rather than turning the researcher away, the access can be granted according to the pre-established rules. Alternatively, you may choose to mediate access to owned titles that are in use.
To learn more about Extended Access options, and other Access Permission settings, register for the LibCentral Poweruser webinar.
2.5Will you continue to support STL?
Absolutely we are continuing to support STL, and encourage our publishers to continue to support STL. ProQuest LibCentral has various options in Access Permissions and DDA Profiling to support STL while also controlling your expenditure.
2.6 How will STLs be issued in Ebook Central?
Short-Term Loans for Ebook Central are issued to an individual user and an unlimited number of patrons can trigger loans concurrently. This has advantages over the ebrary model of institution-based loans, where loans issued are a 1-user model and concurrent use of loan is not permitted. With ebrary today, if a patron downloads abook using STL, other patrons cannot use the title during download.
Ebook Central‘s user-based model gives you the benefit of providing simultaneous access to multiple patrons - enabling concurrent loans for a title. The model also addresses publisher concerns regarding STLs; we want publishers to be encouraged to continue to offer STLs for their titles. Publishers are more receptive to user-based loans. That said, as we modeled the data, we did not find a significant difference in the number of STLs issued, user-based vs. institution based.
2.7What are theDDA triggersin Ebook Central?
In Ebook Central, STLs and autopurchases are triggered when a patron views a book for more than 5 minutes, prints, copies or downloads a chapter or the full ebook.
There is no limit to the number of pages viewed by the patron within the 5 minute free view period. The Ebook Central model does not count usage across all users to generate a trigger.
3. PROFILING
3.1 Will we be able to create or modify our own DDA profiles in Ebook Central?
Ultimately, yes. We are going to get there in phases; we have a roadmap of what we’ll be providing at launch and what will come post launch.
At launch, you will be able to immediately modify your profile by turning the visibility of titles on or off in LibCentral. Your profile will be aware of and respects those changes. You also can submit changes to existing profiles in LibCentral. Updates to an existing profile are then made by our on-staff librarians (ebook Client Relationship Managers). They will typically get back to you within 1-2 business days with updates or follow-up questions.
In our experience, our customers are very happy with the consulting service they currently receive from our ebook Client Relationship Managers who work to implement your profiling needs. This support will continue even as we move towards more self-service options post-launch.
Post launch, we’ll continue enhancing our DDA Profiling features by adding additional self-service capabilities for you to create new DDA profiles yourself, as well as modifying existing profiles. Our profiling is very robust and full-featured, and we want to make sure the capabilities are well understood so we are being thoughtful and measured about the roadmap and rollout of self-service features.
3.2 Will my current ebrary profiles be available in Ebook Central?
We will be consulting with you on your profiling strategy, as there are many new options and profiling filters for you in ProQuest LibCentral. An ebook Client Relationship Manager will review your current ebrary profiles with you, explain new options you may not be familiar with, and will build a new profile or profiles for your review and approval. We believe it’s important to consult with you regarding your Ebook Central profiles so that you can utilize all of the features that are now available to you.