MARC Records Enhancements and new KBARTs for Springer Nature New Flexible eBook Solutions

At the beginning of October we introduced the Springer Nature Flexible eBook Solutions, a new institutional eBook business model that provides libraries and research institutions with a broader range of choice in how they purchase and access digital book content. The new eBook solutions are providing flexible options to meet individual needs of libraries.

Supporting the rollout of the new Springer Nature Flexible eBook Solutions, we have successfully released enriched MARC records, to enable institutional customers to discover and access their licensed content in the new eBook collection setups via library catalogues. The main change of this MARC release is that a book title is now assigned to more than one eBook collection: for example, to the eBook collections that existed so far as well as to the new Flexible eBook Solutions.

With this structure in place we are able to support the needs of all customers licensing through all available business models.

Beyond focusing on the Flexible eBook Solutions, this MARC release further includes modifications requested by librarians to better meet their needs and to adjust to changes in internal data models. The updated metadata is available via our usual data distribution options in all serializations (MARC21, MARC XML), including the Metadata Downloader and data deliveries on (s)ftp. Click here for more details on the MARC release including documentation on the changes in the format and find the mapping of all eBook collections to the ISIL/library codes in the DACH region (Produktsigel) here.

In addition to the MARC records we have also rolled out new KBARTs to support the new Flexible eBook Solutions. KBART is a widely accepted recommended practice to set out the specific title-level metadata to be provided to knowledge bases, libraries and discovery services. We have successfully released KBART files for the new eBook collections to enable institutional customers to discover and access the content through SN Flexible eBook Solutions. The new files are available on our KBART page.

Libraries can also select targets for the new Flexible eBook Solutions they have licensed via Discovery Services EBSCO EDS, ProQuest 360 KB, ExLibris Alma and OCLC WorldCat. Springer Narture provided the data to create targets in Discovery Service vendor’s KnowledgeBase. For questions, please contact us at discovery@springernature.com