New Technology Speeds the Quality and Accuracy of Information Discovery for Students, Faculty and Staff
POMONA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE via COLLEGIATE PRESSWIRE)--June 26, 2006--Auto-Graphics, Inc. (Pink Sheets:AUGR), a technology innovator providing library automation solutions for over 35 years, today announced that the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) has reported a 51% increase in the use of its library's electronic resources after implementing the Auto-Graphics' federated search solution, AGent Search(TM). In use now for more than a year, AGent Search (code named SuperSearch on the UAH campus) allows authenticated users to fully leverage the University's significant investment in high quality, authoritative content sources for their research, providing the means to conduct federated searches across multiple, disparate, free and proprietary e-resources simultaneously. As the University's extensive electronic resource collection includes more than 52,000 periodicals; 50,000 e-books; and 350 subscription-based premium databases, the ability to conduct research within a secure, intuitive, single sign-on user interface has had a positive impact on the University's students, faculty and library staff.
"Auto-Graphics has been nothing less than remarkable in terms of product dependability and its response and service to us as a client," remarked Dr. Wilson Luquire, Dean of the M. Louis Salmon Library, University of Alabama in Huntsville. "Research that may have taken more than an hour to manually search multiple databases one at a time, can now be condensed to less than a few minutes, simply by utilizing the federated search capabilities inherent in AGent Search."
In an informal poll of UAH students and faculty, 85% of the 94 survey respondents said they liked the AGent Search solution overall, with 60% reporting that the tool was a major time saver for research and information discovery. In addition to the significant advantages gained in research, the University's library staff has also realized some additional and unexpected benefits. "AGent Search has helped us to better understand our content investment," said UAH Technology Librarian Annette Parrish. "Using SuperSearch on a daily basis, we've been pleased to uncover a wealth of knowledge in our existing content investment, identifying obscure content resources that we would not have thought to recommend to our students for a particular research subject. Learning more about our databases allows us to guide researchers towards the most current and relevant information."
UAH originally deployed AGent Search as a University-branded web portal linked from the UAH public web site and made it accessible to all authenticated users. UAH has been so happy with the product implementation and the many advantages gained over the past year, that it has now decided to upgrade its contract to include Auto-Graphics' web services integration capabilities and the company's unique AGent Search Microsoft Word client. The new product upgrade allows the University to stay at the forefront of federated search technology, providing its students, faculty and staff with the most comprehensive federated search capability available across multiple workflow environments.
"AGent Search raises the bar on federated searching in the academic library market, providing greater options for conducting intelligent information discovery, based on the workflow environment students and researchers prefer," commented Auto-Graphics president, Paul Cope. "With hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in licensed content each year, AGent Search is a powerful tool that helps our academic customers gain a much greater return on this investment through intelligent search results management, comprehensive reporting capabilities and increased usage. We are especially proud that the product provides a real-world solution to improve workflow, yet provides more design flexibility and faster deployment time than other products available today."
Auto-Graphics will showcase AGent Search at this month's American Library Association show in New Orleans in Booth #3527 and later in the year at the E-Info Global Symposium: Information Delivery & E-Access in Academic Libraries, hosted by the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Readers interested in learning more about the AGent Search implementation at the University of Alabama in Huntsville may read the
About Auto-Graphics, Inc.
Founded in 1950, Auto-Graphics has been a technology innovator for more than five decades, providing data automation solutions to customers across multiple industries. For the past 35 years, Auto-Graphics has helped libraries of all sizes become more efficient and patron-centric. Its flagship solution, AGent(TM), is the one of the most comprehensive library automation platforms available today, allowing libraries of any size manage, share and search their resources. The AGent integrated product suite - currently used by more than 5,000 libraries in North America - comprises a complete ILS system for public libraries; a robust ILL solution for consortial entities and member libraries; and a powerful federated search solution for both public and academic libraries. For more information, please visit https://www.auto-graphics.com/.
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