Ex Libris®, a ProQuest company, is pleased to announce that University of the Cumberlands (UC) has selected the Ex Libris Alma® library services platform and Primo for search and discovery. 

University of the Cumberlands was founded in 1888 with a focus on shaping students throughout the Appalachian region. Cumberlands has become one of the largest and fastest growing universities in the U.S. and places a strong focus on affordable learning, including free textbooks for traditional undergraduate students.

The library will use Alma and Primo to manage and provide access to all its physical and electronic resources as well as discipline-specific research guides that list highly relevant electronic resources. The library has risen to the challenge of supporting remote, virtual students by acquiring electronic resources including e-books, e-journals, streaming media (video and music), and other electronic resources available for academic research. Primo will also provide a reliable and seamless patron resource sharing user experience by linking to interlibrary loan request forms and provide valuable insight into usage data.

In addition to faculty and staff, most of the university’s students learn online, which means it is critical to support remote users 24/7. Alma is cloud-based and receives monthly updates, meaning Cumberlands can depend on a system that is always up to date with new features, constantly patched and secure, and has a system infrastructure that is elastic enough to scale to the growing number of users as well as handle sudden spikes in usage.

Cumberlands is also looking forward to improving ease of access for faculty and staff, resolving linking issues to existing resources, creating better efficiency for interlibrary loan and digitization requests, and offering better menu options to link to other library services.

“Ex Libris Alma and Primo will enhance the digital library experiences for our faculty and students by providing a search portal that accesses electronic and print books, articles, conference proceedings, videos, and other resources that support academic research,” said Jan Wren, Director of the Library. “The analytics and reporting will also allow the library staff to monitor usage of resources and needs of users to ensure appropriate resources are accessible to our faculty and students.”

“Ex Libris is delighted that Cumberlands has selected our Higher Ed platform,” added Eric Hines, president of Ex Libris North America. “We look forward to helping their leadership realize their vision of becoming a 21st century learning center that continues to strategically adopt new technologies and electronic resources to meet the information needs of their diverse faculty and student body.” 

About University of the Cumberlands 

Located in the heart of Appalachia, University of the Cumberlands (UC) is an institution of regional distinction that offers undergraduate degrees in more than 40 major fields of study, along with several pre-professional, graduate, and doctoral programs. With a total enrollment of more than 18,000 students, Cumberlands is one of the largest and most affordable private universities in Kentucky. Cumberlands is devoted to preparing students for the future through innovative programs as well as hands-on, experiential learning and research. 

About Ex Libris

Ex Libris, a ProQuest company, is a leading global provider of cloud-based solutions that enable institutions and their individual users to create, manage, and share knowledge. In close collaboration with its customers and the broader community, Ex Libris develops creative solutions that increase library productivity, maximize the impact of research activities, enhance teaching and learning, and drive student mobile engagement. Ex Libris serves over 7,500 customers in 90 countries. For more information, see our website and join us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.