Hi Colleagues, Hope this information will be useful for VTLS customers and also to keep note of mergers and partnership among Library system developers. *Innovative Acquires VTLS http://www.iii.com/vtls http://www.iii.com/vtls * *& announce expanded strategic Partnership with EBSCO Discovery Service * On May 30, 2014 Innovative acquired VTLS, a library automation solutions provider with customers in 44 countries. The combined companies will be led by Innovative CEO Kim Massana. The combined company will offer even greater resources to Innovative customers in solving the challenges of library automation, deepening customer support and product development capabilities worldwide. Innovative now supports an installed base of over 2,400 library systems, totaling 9,500 libraries, in 66 countries. Corporate headquarters will continue to be located in Emeryville, CA, with other major offices in Blacksburg, VA; Syracuse, NY; Dublin, Ireland; Barcelona, Spain; Kuala Lumpur (Selangor), Malaysia; Noida, India; Madrid, Spain; and Taipei City, Taiwan. Innovative now employs more than 500 staff members, including 150 librarians. *Innovative Interfaces and EBSCO Discovery Service Announce Expanded Strategic Partnership * http://www.iii.com/news/pr_display.php?id=573 Discovery/ILS Partnership Leads to Greater Integration of Electronic Resource Discovery and Delivery Emeryville, CA--Innovative Interfaces, Inc. (Innovative) and EBSCO Information Services http://www.ebsco.com/ (EBSCO) have expanded their strategic partnership designed to improve access to library resources. The expanded partnership will incorporate catalog functionality within the EBSCO Discovery Service(tm) (EDS) experience including real-time circulation status checking, enabling end users to place holds via EDS, providing libraries with single sign-on authentication and displaying patron account status within EDS. The partnership also allows Innovative to sell EBSCO A-to-Z(tm) with LinkSource(R), which will be known as Full Text Finder(tm). Innovative Chief Executive Officer, Kim Massana, says the expanded agreement came out of the success of the existing working arrangement. "As we have developed our current Encore/EDS integration, we saw opportunities for a closer working relationship in other areas that will benefit our library customers and their end users." EBSCO Information Services President Tim Collins say the expanded partnership with Innovative is a great example of two library vendors working together to benefit customers. "We know our customers are looking for a variety of solutions for improving access to library collections and that is what we want to provide. The continuing success of our partnership with Innovative is a testament to what two vendors can accomplish when they decide it is in their collective best interests to develop solutions that leverage their strengths and, most importantly, serve the needs of their customers." The existing agreement has provided for joint development designed to enable more tightly integrated access between Innovative's Encore discovery platform and EBSCO Discovery Service http://www.ebscohost.com/discovery (EDS) in addition to facilitating access between EDS and Innovative's Sierra Services Platform. Having access to EDS's unified index expands the quality and amount of content available for Encore users while adding the enhanced features and functionality available from EDS. Encore users are also able to search their EBSCOhost databases via the Encore interface--providing a uniquely powerful article search experience. The partnership has also led to the development of the newly released Encore with EBSCO Discovery Service, which brings the most comprehensive collection of full-text articles available into Encore. The robust metadata offered by EDS is culled from thousands of major journal publishers and information providers, providing the deepest possible indexing for the majority of journals and magazines. In addition, users of Encore with EBSCO Discovery Service benefit from more full-text resources than with any other option. Regards *Nikesh Narayanan **M.Tech, MLIS, M.Com* Discovery Service Engineer (India) *EBSCO* Information Services India Pvt. Ltd., 301-303 Ansal Chamber - II 6, Bhikaji Cama place New Delhi - 110 066 Mobile: +918130995687 -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.