A lot happened in 2012 at Swets. This post is aimed at synthesising not only those important developments, but also looking at how they fit with the wider library and publishing industry.
Altmetrics hit libraries
Our flagship product launch in 2012 was Mendeley Institutional Edition. This was the first step in a new direction for Swets to help institutions add services around research productivity, and giving them a better window on what research is happening around the institution. The service adds real benefits to both the individual researchers and the library themselves. The unique real-time analytics and data held within Mendeley Institutional Edition allow the librarians visibility of their researchers’ behaviour in the form of altmetric indicators. Not only does this give them the opportunity to present the library holdings directly through the tool, but also to view various behaviours recorded by their reading habits in Mendeley and ultimately compliment the journal collection development process by discovering highly used (or unused) and missing content.
Early adopters of the tool represent a great international mix, including Stanford University (US), Harvard Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics (US), VTT Technical Research Centre in Finland (Finland), University of Western Ontario (Canada), KAIST (South Korea), University of Pittsburgh (US) as well as others in Germany, Malaysia and other regions. We have a strong pipeline of real interest in this service.
See our Storify page for Mendeley Institutional Edition for feedback, blogs, and quite a few tweets on this new innovative altmetric product.
eBooks continue to fly
The academic eBook market is a high-growth market with differing service requirements to the print book market. At Swets, we have used the feedback from our customers to develop our eBook service. Our significant growth this year reflects that we are listening and responding. In 2012, we continued to smooth our processes to ensure that we not only offer the largest selection of eBooks in the library market, but also provide up-front the information librarians need the most: license details, price comparisons across vendors and budget control. There are some exciting times ahead in 2013, so watch this space… Find out the benefits of our eBook program here.
LibServ launched to provide managed services for libraries
LibServ is our response from a growing need of corporate and other libraries to find ways to continue to provide a strong service, however at a lower cost. Over the years, some libraries have outsourced different parts of their activities to us. This year we pulled them all together into a focussed offer for all our customers that are looking for a different way to meet the increasing demands of their researchers and budget holders.
New look for Swets
In July 2012, the Swets headquarters office moved from Lisse to Leiden in the Netherlands. Leiden is well-known as a major centre of learning in Europe and beyond, and therefore moving our headquarters to sit alongside seemed a natural move being a leading provider of the world’s scholarly and professional information.
In addition to the new headquarters office, we successfully launched our new website and branding, which has proven popular for Swets’ online presence. Incorporated into this is the SwetsBlog, which has generated a lot of interest and discussion within our communities already, and which we intend to expand to cover more industry topics and hot areas of debate within the library and publishing worlds.
A new focus
Working again with our library and publisher communities, we outlined several key themes to focus our business which are relevant to libraries and publishers to improve their efficiencies and allow us to add value to their operations.
For libraries, we identified the following three: Research Productivity, Selection Management, Access Management
For Publishers, our services and solutions cover: Performance Information Services, Sales Support, Sales and Administrative Support
A warm ‘thank you’
Finally, the successes of 2012 at Swets would not have been possible without our customers and partners. We value all of our relationships very highly and we look forward to developing them further in 2013.
Looking back at 2012
3 jan 2013 Filed under: Selection ManagementA lot happened in 2012 at Swets. This post is aimed at synthesising not only those important developments, but also looking at how they fit with the wider library and publishing industry.
Altmetrics hit libraries
Our flagship product launch in 2012 was Mendeley Institutional Edition. This was the first step in a new direction for Swets to help institutions add services around research productivity, and giving them a better window on what research is happening around the institution. The service adds real benefits to both the individual researchers and the library themselves. The unique real-time analytics and data held within Mendeley Institutional Edition allow the librarians visibility of their researchers’ behaviour in the form of altmetric indicators. Not only does this give them the opportunity to present the library holdings directly through the tool, but also to view various behaviours recorded by their reading habits in Mendeley and ultimately compliment the journal collection development process by discovering highly used (or unused) and missing content.
Early adopters of the tool represent a great international mix, including Stanford University (US), Harvard Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics (US), VTT Technical Research Centre in Finland (Finland), University of Western Ontario (Canada), KAIST (South Korea), University of Pittsburgh (US) as well as others in Germany, Malaysia and other regions. We have a strong pipeline of real interest in this service.
See our Storify page for Mendeley Institutional Edition for feedback, blogs, and quite a few tweets on this new innovative altmetric product.
eBooks continue to fly
The academic eBook market is a high-growth market with differing service requirements to the print book market. At Swets, we have used the feedback from our customers to develop our eBook service. Our significant growth this year reflects that we are listening and responding. In 2012, we continued to smooth our processes to ensure that we not only offer the largest selection of eBooks in the library market, but also provide up-front the information librarians need the most: license details, price comparisons across vendors and budget control. There are some exciting times ahead in 2013, so watch this space… Find out the benefits of our eBook program here.
LibServ launched to provide managed services for libraries
LibServ is our response from a growing need of corporate and other libraries to find ways to continue to provide a strong service, however at a lower cost. Over the years, some libraries have outsourced different parts of their activities to us. This year we pulled them all together into a focussed offer for all our customers that are looking for a different way to meet the increasing demands of their researchers and budget holders.
New look for Swets
In July 2012, the Swets headquarters office moved from Lisse to Leiden in the Netherlands. Leiden is well-known as a major centre of learning in Europe and beyond, and therefore moving our headquarters to sit alongside seemed a natural move being a leading provider of the world’s scholarly and professional information.
In addition to the new headquarters office, we successfully launched our new website and branding, which has proven popular for Swets’ online presence. Incorporated into this is the SwetsBlog, which has generated a lot of interest and discussion within our communities already, and which we intend to expand to cover more industry topics and hot areas of debate within the library and publishing worlds.
A new focus
Working again with our library and publisher communities, we outlined several key themes to focus our business which are relevant to libraries and publishers to improve their efficiencies and allow us to add value to their operations.
For libraries, we identified the following three: Research Productivity, Selection Management, Access Management
For Publishers, our services and solutions cover: Performance Information Services, Sales Support, Sales and Administrative Support
A warm ‘thank you’
Finally, the successes of 2012 at Swets would not have been possible without our customers and partners. We value all of our relationships very highly and we look forward to developing them further in 2013.
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