Jerusalem, Israel – December 15, 2009. Ex Libris® Group is pleased to welcome the first academic institutions to collaborate with the Company as partners for the Primo Central index of scholarly materials.

More than 250 leading academic and research institutions in 28 countries already benefit from the Primo® discovery and delivery solution, installed locally or managed by Ex Libris as a service. Primo Central, a new component in the Primo search environment, is a centralized index comprising data harvested from primary and secondary publishers and aggregators. By incorporating the Primo Central index, a library offers one search interface and a single, relevance-ranked result list, regardless of the origin of the information—be it local, institutional collections or global collections of electronic journals, e-books, and other scholarly materials. Ex Libris provides Primo Central as a service, in a cloud environment.

The following institutions are the first ones to become partners in this exciting initiative:
• Brigham Young University (United States)
• Cooperative Library Network Berlin-Brandenburg—KOBV Consortium: Humboldt University, Free University of Berlin, Mannheim University, and the Technological University, Berlin (Germany)
• Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium)
• Michiana Academic Library Consortium institutions: University of Notre Dame, Saint Mary's College, Holy Cross College, and Bethel College (United States)
• Oxford University (United Kingdom)
• University of New South Wales (Australia)
• Vanderbilt University (United States)
• Yonsei University (South Korea)

These partner libraries will start using the Primo Central service following the beta release at the end of December 2009. The general release is targeted for mid-2010.

University Librarian Andrew Wells, at the University of New South Wales in Australia, commented: “Becoming a Primo Central library partner provides an exciting opportunity to influence the development of this important new Primo service. Searching for both local and global resources with the same ease, our users will enjoy a new level of search experience that perfectly matches their expectations and needs. Furthermore, we value being able to shape the way in which we present global collections and discovery options and to render the user experience in a manner appropriate to our library and our users.”

Nancy Dushkin, corporate vice president of discovery and delivery solutions at Ex Libris, remarked: “We are privileged to be working with the enthusiastic international group of library partners, whose experience and varying viewpoints are extremely valuable. In collaboration with information providers, we are extending the power of Primo to make the wealth of global and regional materials highly discoverable by library users.”

Organizations that have recently become members of the Primo Central Publisher Program—joining the many information providers already on board—include Cambridge University Press, the University of Chicago Press, Emerald Group Publishing Ltd., JSTOR, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the Royal Society of Chemistry. By the time Primo Central is released to the general public, Ex Libris anticipates that the index will include about half a billion records that originate from scholarly publishers.

About the University of New South Wales
Established in 1949, and celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2009, the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has close to 40,000 students, including more than 7000 international students from over 130 countries. The University offers over 300 undergraduate and 600 postgraduate programs, and has developed an extensive network of alumni chapters. The main UNSW campus is at Kensington, seven kilometres from the centre of Sydney, with other campuses including the College of Fine Arts, Paddington, and UNSW@ADFA (Australian Defence Force Academy), Canberra.

About Ex Libris
Ex Libris is a leading provider of automation solutions for academic, national, and research libraries. Offering the only comprehensive product suite for electronic, digital, and print materials, Ex Libris provides efficient, user-friendly products that serve the needs of libraries today and will facilitate their transition into the future. Ex Libris maintains an impressive customer base consisting of thousands of sites in more than 75 countries on six continents.

Dedicated to developing creative solutions in close collaboration with customers, Ex Libris enables libraries to maximize productivity and efficiency and, at the same time, greatly enhance the user experience. By empowering users to discover and obtain the information they need, libraries ensure their position as the bridge to knowledge.

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