Educational Testing Service (ETS) Connects the Dots with SydneyEnterprise: New Case Study

Who is ETS?

ETS is a nonprofit organization that advances worldwide quality and equity in education by creating assessments based on rigorous research. They develop, administer and score more than 50 million tests annually in more than 180 countries, at more than 9,000 locations worldwide.

The Accessibility Challenge

ETS’ relationship with SydneyPlus began in 1987 when the demand to catalog their various collections became pressing. ETS’ professional staff produces and collects a significant volume of important content, and offering global access to these materials is imperative. Providing access to their books, general library collection, archives (e.g. institutional history; conferences; papers; proceedings; writings of founding officers and key researchers, product histories) and their test instrument collection was the driving force for selecting an ILS. SydneyPlus was the solution.

Strategic Outreach

Beyond internal access, ETS wanted to make the test collection available externally, to educational researchers, to professors who teach testing and measurement in universities, and through hundreds of libraries around the world. With direct access to the test collection database, people can see what tests are available and how and why they have been developed – including non-ETS tests.

Another purpose-built externally facing service made possible by SydneyPlus is the ETS Authors database, which provides access to ETS’ body of work, wherever it resides. The ETS Research Department wanted to offer public access to an index of ETS authored key research. While ETS had maintained a web page providing access to its ETS Research Report series, its research published in journals or as book chapters was getting lost. Most of the content and cataloging was already in the Archive collection, so ETS and Sydney undertook a project to extract from it, create a new database and leverage prior work. Over 500 documents formed the core of the ETS Authors database; that number has now grown to 10,000.

Innovation and Imagination

With their successful implementation of SydneyEnterprise, Lucidea’s flagship unified ILS and KM solution, the ETS Knowledge Services team has once more achieved their goal of leveraging leading edge technology to help ETS staff listen, learn and lead. ETS was among the first to see SydneyEnterprise, and among the first clients to migrate. Key decision makers chose SydneyEnterprise for several reasons, including:

• Enhanced information discovery
• Single venue for administration, searching the collection, and all other library functions
• Integration with key IT systems such as SharePoint
• Efficiency: with minimal training, the ability to leverage logical, intuitive and sensible workflows
• Purpose built design that follows library best practices
• Web based reporting and other powerful tools
• An appealing and functional interface that staff and patrons enjoy using

While offering comprehensive access to critical content through a single venue is of primary importance, information professionals at ETS and elsewhere also prioritize independence and integration. Leveraging tools that allow library staff to administer and configure their own platforms is critical, as is the ability to integrate library databases and systems with existing information resources, including SharePoint. With SydneyEnterprise, ETS Knowledge Services staff can definitely further these goals.

ETS believes in the power of education, and they believe in the power of SydneyEnterprise to support and share their research, helping them lead in the development of new and innovative products and services around the world.