According to Charlie Rapple, senior product manager of Ingenta, Connect Complete is the "new incarnation" of the company's existing customized library gateway used by a number of Ingenta library customers. Connect Complete has been enhanced with additional features, including all those available as part of IngentaConnect and IngentaConnect Premium. Existing gateway library customers have just been asked to review a beta of the capabilities of Connect Complete and will likely make the transition in January 2006. One librarian said that an e-mail from Ingenta about the service asked them for feedback and indicated that the new version would not go live until the library staff was happy with the new customized look.

The new Connect Complete service lets libraries personalize and brand the entire research portal. Libraries can have their own logos, text, color schemes, etc., on all pages of the site. Library holdings can be uploaded and OpenURL servers can be configured to enable links to licensed content or to content held elsewhere. As on all three IngentaConnect services, access to full text is available by either subscription or pay-per-view. Users don't bump into a dead end.

Connect Complete administrators can enable blocking and links out to both local and other Web-based holdings, to avoid unnecessary ordering of documents. Patrons can benefit from discounts on e-document delivery, while library staff can control and segment their purchasing using the cost center and capping features of IngentaConnect payment accounts.

Discussing the benefits of the new service, Amel Saghiri, library and end user services manager for IngentaConnect, said: "IngentaConnect Complete gives libraries more ownership of their online journals; by integrating IngentaConnect with their OPAC they can take advantage of the comprehensive coverage of our collection whilst maximizing usage—and therefore the value—of their own."

Pricing for IngentaConnect Complete starts at $5,000, and depends on which features libraries wish to take, for example, whether they opt to include patron upload (uploading details of all their patrons, so that these are automatically registered on Ingenta's system). The service includes a license to the InTouch alerting services. Ingenta has now rolled OpenURL compliancy into the main gateway package (it was previously an upgrade) and made available a full suite of alerting tools.

The two other IngentaConnect services continue to be an option for libraries that don't want or can't afford the gateway approach. IngentaConnect is free to use and patrons can browse to the abstract level. Some 19,000 institutions worldwide use IngentaConnect to access the full text of articles — some 19 million articles from 29,500 publications, including 8,000 online with others delivered via fax or Ariel. Libraries can upgrade to IngentaConnect Premium for $495 per year, which provides some library branding, an introductory alerting license, more detailed usage reports, and unlimited telephone support. While browsing by subscriptions is available through the standard IngentaConnect interface, Premium customers can restrict searches to content accessible via institutional license. According to Rapple, IngentaConnect has up to 12 million user sessions per month and 25 million personal registered users.

Just about a year ago, in fall 2004 , Ingenta replaced its two previous online research interfaces (Ingenta and Ingentaselect) with IngentaConnect. The newly architected platform allowed Ingenta to provide simplified navigation, improved linking, and enhanced personalization. It has spent the last year working on system enhancements, adding new publishers, and working with publishers on new content licensing options, such as Connect Collections.

Maney Publishing worked closely with Ingenta to develop the Connect Collections architecture, and the following three MORE (Maney Online Research E-journals) Collections will launch the service initially: Materials Science and Engineering, History/ Humanities, and Healthcare. Each Connect Collection has its own homepage on IngentaConnect, which can be customized with collection-specific logos, information, and related links.

Rapple said the Connect Collections appeal to publishers because it lets them attract new markets and offer libraries more affordable slices of content. She said Ingenta is developing other Connect Collections with several other publishers but the company isn't ready to make announcements yet. She said Ingenta has more than 300 publisher partners and she expects this collection option to prove popular in the next few years.

Michael Gallico, managing director at Maney Publishing, commented: "We were looking for a way to make our journals work harder for us whilst still providing excellent value to our customers…Maney's journals can now be licensed in various flexible ways, ensuring our customers can access top-quality information at cost-effective prices."

IngentaConnect vice president Douglas Wright pointed out another attraction for libraries. "Big deals are losing popularity as libraries recognize they don't need all the journals they're getting. Connect Collections allow libraries to maximize the value they get for their time and money, by cutting out the content they don't need, and only licensing and administrating the material which is really appropriate to their institution."

If you're going to be in London for Online Information, you can visit Ingenta at stand 274 in the exhibition hall.