Acquisitions: EBSCO Acquires Linked Data Infrastructure Provider Zepheira

From EBSCO:

EBSCO Information Services has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Zepheira, a provider of large-scale, decentralized linked data infrastructure. Zepheira’s mission is to connect libraries, archives and museums to make the world a smarter place. Zepheira uncovers previously hidden data and insights for patrons and facilitates connections between library systems and the open web. This acquisition reinforces EBSCO’s commitment to making information available when, where and how users need it.

The team behind Zepheira were leaders within the Semantic Web Initiative for the World Wide Web Consortia (W3C) while at MIT and co-founded the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative at OCLC. More recently Zepheira provided the technical leadership for the Library of Congress in developing the BIBFRAME Linked Data standard for bibliographic data. These are trusted and highly utilized data standards and working groups setting industry standards in both the library and broader information services community.

Zepheira’s linked data technology allows library data to be referenced on the open web and in knowledge panels by service providers such as Google. This makes it easier to bring additional patrons into the library system, expanding the reach of its content, and provides enriched and contextually relevant information for patrons. Following the integration of library collections data into the Google knowledge panel at the end of last year, the impact of these technologies for libraries is increasing. EBSCO first partnered with Zepheira in 2015 and the partnership includes data enrichment services with NoveList^® Select, offering additional data access points to patrons searching for reading resources.

Read the Complete Announcement

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Data Files, EBSCO, Libraries, Management and Leadership, News, Patrons and Users