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HAN University To Use Discovery Service To Simplify Access to Research Content
As part of their effort to be among the top universities in applied sciences in the Netherlands, HAN University has recently implemented a new platform to simplify access to institutional resources and increase user access to research content and repositories.
According to the university, student access to publication resources and research databases was slow and cumbersome under their old system. So the university decided to implement the Ebsco Discovery Service (EDS) platform based on the breadth and depth of Ebsco's content, as well as the ability to implement EDS widgets in multiple languages on the university's Web sites, expanding user exposure and access to information through a simplified search mechanism.
"Our old service was slow and yielded less and less results [than the] students and staff were expecting," said Maarten Hekman, coordinator of the university's Digital Study Center, in a prepared statement. "We looked at a number of discovery solutions and EDS provided the best content and coverage for our needs." Hekman added, "We are excited to see what impact EDS has on our users' experience. We feel a lot more students will find what they need in just a few clicks."
The university plans to take advantage of several other features of the platform, including guest access to allow unauthenticated users to search content and speed up the research process and platform blending, which provides access to subject indexes not participating in any discovery services.
According to Ebsco, the "base Index in EDS represents content from approximately 20,000 providers and includes partners from the world's largest scholarly journal and book publishers."
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Chris Riedel is a freelance writer based in Illinois. He can be reached here.
