Ebsco Discovers Discovery and Finds Lunch Other Ways
September 7, 2015
If you are in Paris in September 2015, you might want to swing by and catch the Ebsco Subscription Services lecture about “Bien choisir son portail documentaire, un enjeu statégique pour l’enterprise.” Ebsco, like other vendors of expensive “real” content is feeling the economic squeeze. The solution is to find a way to sell library-oriented information to a broader world. The idea is to package up software and expensive information from “real” publishers in a buzzword bundle.
Here’s what the Ebsco expert will explain:
To meet the new needs of research and professional content in business and in particular to help professionals identify, query and operate more easily useful resources, Ebsco Discovery Service has developed a new generation of information portals, marketed as discovery solutions. Ebsco Discovery Service provides company employees with a single access, not only to all [I love these categorical affirmatives] professional information available within the company in paper or electronic format; for example, journals, magazines, books, databases, etc.), but especially to the most reliable and latest information for all [here we go again with precise logical explanations] their research, their business documents, their briefs, their training program, etc.
I noted the two etc. Very comprehensive.
The question is, “Will Ebsco be able to make headway in markets outside of libraries?” Like other for fee content companies, the costs of marketing, technology, and licenses continue to rise.
Diversification is necessary for Ebsco and similar firms. Perhaps Ebsco will succeed. Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, LexisNexis, and other old school outfits are facing the same challenges as Ebsco.
My hunch is that Ebsco and these other old school firms missed out on business and technical information “plays” which were captured by faster moving, more strategic competitors.
For business information today, I find it essential to review the information available on LinkedIn and similar non traditional publishing platforms.
I dearly love the Harvard Business Review and Nature, but I find the information stale and out of touch with my information needs. The here and now problems senior managers face demand different types of information services. Diffeo, maybe? What about Recorded Future?
The decline of the commercial database sector which was thriving in the 1980s is history. Now the aggregators face the same challenge.
Discovering a solution is more difficult than a pleasant afternoon in Paris in September. I assume that “excellence in all we do” means having lunch at L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon. How does one choose a restaurant after a lecture about discovery? I did not use Ebsco, gentle reader. I used a modern, real-time service with hooks into streams of social content.
The indexes of HBR and other “academic” content are for another time, another world.
Stephen E Arnold, September 7, 2015
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