EMERYVILLE, Calif. November 19, 2019 – Innovative, a leading provider of library software, announces the successful launches of Inspire™ Discovery at Cairn University in Langhorne Manor, Pennsylvania, and Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan. Cairn and Hillsdale are early adopters of Inspire, a radically different library platform that delivers experiences designed to meet people’s expectations of modern media and software solutions. Inspire Discovery, the first module to debut on the platform, revolutionizes traditional search-and-find by delivering curated information in context. The results are displayed in an intuitive, visual interface that’s easy to use.
“Cairn, Hillsdale, and other academic institutions are facing the reality they must adopt new technologies to stay relevant and be the first source for trusted information,” said Shaheen Javadizadeh, CEO of Innovative. “After launching Inspire Discovery at these campuses, we are thrilled to find their experiences to be positive. Our thorough product development process included ongoing feedback from our customers, so we are excited to see students and faculty using the tool for their work and finding their research efforts to be more relevant and fruitful.”
“Inspire forced me to think outside the box. It is new and, as we have come to find out, a progressive way of approaching the search and discover process,” said Stephanie Kaceli, Library Director at Cairn University. “Ease of use is a real problem for the library. One of the common threads in our solicited and unsolicited user feedback, since launching Inspire Discovery, is the ease in locating quality resources. The Cairn library staff are beyond pleased with the favorable feedback from our community and see ourselves as fortunate for the opportunity to be a part of this new solution from the ground up.”
Hillsdale College Library Director Maurine McCourry said, “We are excited about the potential of Inspire Discovery to enhance discovery by allowing our system to fully participate in the semantic web. Our users expect efficient and powerful research tools, and Inspire will be that, for sure.”
“The librarians at Hillsdale College have worked together with the Inspire Discovery team to develop an interface that will enrich the research experience of our faculty and students,” said LeAnne Rumler, Technical Services Librarian at Hillsdale College, who led the implementation. “The students and faculty have been very enthusiastic about the search results Inspire Discovery returns and the new, cleaner look of the pages. The concept wheel adds a bit of serendipity to the search results helping our users find connections they had not expected.”
Unlike other solutions that only use list-based relevancy for search results, Inspire Discovery is architected on BIBFRAME with several fundamental differentiators, including:
- Reveals unexpected, new connections and ideas: Search results of greater variety and relevance are visible across a broad collection of resources, including purchased content and content available directly from publishers, database providers and open-access resources.
- Intuitive search experiences: Powered by a proprietary context engine, Discovery results are displayed in a Context Wheel™ allowing people to “see” and navigate relationships between authors, concepts, and resources.
- Modern technology: Built from the ground up, Inspire uses cutting-edge technology to enable quick application deployment to library staff and end users, with a responsive and accessible interface.
“Researchers – students in particular – are naturally tempted to search for information on the Internet, but the problem with that is there is a large amount of information and sources that cannot be trusted,” said Javadizadeh. “We all want trusted information, but it’s absolutely critical in an academic setting. Traditional search software is built on old approaches that, quite frankly, are a turn-off to younger students. Our mission with Discovery was to create a new approach to create new opportunities for academic libraries to engage students in and out of the library by making it easier to search their trusted resources.”
An overview of the solution and implementation at Cairn were presented at the Charleston Conference on November 7.
For more information about Inspire™ Discovery and other Innovative solutions, visit the Innovative website, iii.com, or call 510-619-3566 to request a demonstration.
###
ABOUT INNOVATIVE INTERFACES INC.
Innovative (www.iii.com) provides leading technology solutions and services that empower libraries and enrich their users worldwide. Innovative offers one of the most comprehensive portfolios of library automation products on the market today, serving academic, public, national, corporate and special libraries and consortia. Headquartered in Emeryville, California, Innovative has a global presence—serving thousands of libraries in 66 countries and offices worldwide.