Ex Libris Group
| Ex Libris Group | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Limited |
| founding | 2006 |
| Seat |
Jerusalem , Israel
|
| management | Matti Shem-Tov |
| Number of employees | 500 |
| Branch | software |
| Status: October 7, 2015 | |
The Ex Libris Group is a world leader in integrated library systems and other library software. The company is headquartered in Jerusalem and is currently owned by the US company ProQuest .
The main customers of the library systems are academic libraries , especially university libraries . The customers are spread all over the world.
Products
The most important products are Aleph and the smaller versions Alephino and Voyager . At the end of 2015, the Alma product was in development.
In addition, Ex Libris is the manufacturer of Ex Libris SFX - one of the first link resolvers , the Discovery & Delivery solution Primo and MetaLib . The portfolio also includes Verde , DigiTool and Rosetta . The company is organized with eight subsidiaries and 12 local distributors in 23 countries for more than 4500 customers worldwide. The Ex Libris Group's competitor is the US-Dutch company OCLC EMEA .
Employee
From 2005 to 2009, Nava Swersky-Sofer was the general manager of Yissum . It established the company's global leadership position and increased operating income 75% to $ 60 million.
At the end of 2011, Ex Libris had 512 employees, 170 of whom worked in development.
The number of employees is estimated at around 500 in 2015. Several hundred of them work in Israel, the rest are spread across the Ex Libris locations around the world.
history
Aleph Yissum was founded in the early 1980s as an offshoot of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . Aleph Yissum was already offering the Aleph library software, which is still widely used today, and its developer Yohanan Shproch has now also taken over the management of the company. After the company was established, the university signed a contract with entrepreneur Azriel Morag, who started another company called Ex Libris to market the software. The sale of the Aleph library system abroad began in 1989. In 1996, the two companies Aleph Yissum and Ex Libris were merged.
In 1998, Walden Israel and Tamar Ventures invested approximately $ 4 million in the company to strengthen its presence in the world market. As a result, the company changed hands several times, during which the value of Ex Libris rose steadily and significantly. In 2006, the Ex Libris Group went from a fusion of Ex Libris with the former Elsevier owned subsidiary Endeavor Information Systems out, after both of the private equity firm Francisco Partners of San Francisco had been taken. The price that Francisco Partners paid for Ex Libris in 2006 is estimated at US $ 62 million.
In August 2008 Ex Libris was sold to the New York company Leeds Equity Partners , also a private equity firm , and in 2012 to the equity investment company Golden Gate Capital . In 2015 the Ex Libris Group was taken over by the database provider ProQuest. The purchase price is estimated at around US $ 500 million.
In 2015, the company supplied over 5600 facilities in more than 90 countries. 43 of the 50 most important universities and over 40 national libraries used Ex Libris products.
criticism
Customers of libraries with Ex Libris products use Ex Libris search engines to find books. Unfortunately, Ex Libris' search technologies are not as advanced as those of Amazon Book Search or Google Books. For searches with spelling variants, typos, word inflections and synonyms, Google Books achieved the best hit rate, followed by Amazon Book Search and then eBay Book Search. The worst hit rates are achieved by the Ex Libris Summon Search and the Primo VE Search.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ CV . [1]
- ↑ Marshall Breeding: Ex Libris Group under new ownership: Leeds Equity sells company to Golden Gate Capital , 2012, accessed from ALA TechSource on December 15, 2015.
- ↑ a b c d e f g ProQuest to Buy Library Software Firm Ex Libris for an Estimated $ 500m. Haaretz from October 7, 2015.
- ↑ Helena Flusfeder: Instant access, library distant . In: Times Higher Education, November 10, 1995.
- ↑ Endeavor to be merged with Ex Libris, to create global leader in library software and services , Francisco Partners press release, November 20, 2006
- ^ Francisco Partners Announces Successful Ex Libris Group Exit . Francisco Partners press release, August 5, 2008
- ↑ ProQuest and Ex Libris Join to Accelerate Innovation for Libraries Worldwide ProQuest, press release, October 6, 2015.
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↑ רוכשת את אקס ליבריס הישראלית בכחצי מיליארד דולר themarker.com of October 8, 2015 (Hebrew)
ProQuest acquires Israeli company Ex Libris for $ 500 million. geektime.com from October 8, 2015 - ^ Roland Suri: Improve Primo Search Algorithms . Bookplate. Retrieved May 5, 2020.