by Kirby Lindsay, posted 18 May 2011
While a laudable success story, Serials Solutions has hardly become a household name among Fremonsters – even with their headquarters located in Fremont since 2004. According to Michael Gersch, Serials Solutions’ General Manager, “We are here, we’ve been here, and we’re going to be here.” For this reason alone, it might be wise to take a moment to get to know something about this growing company.
Located at 501 N. 34th, in the Quadrant Lake Union Center (and across the street from the Red Door,) the company will increase their square footage, in September, by nearly 14,000 square feet. Gersch wants to see the company continue to grow in Fremont in order to attract more quality employees. People “want to work in a cool place,” he said, like Fremont.
Yes, But What Do They Do?
“They’re transforming the research experience,” summarized Jennifer Gehrt, of Communiqué PR. Serials Solutions creates software services to “help people do research,” explained Gersch, and to help “libraries manage their information.”
The solutions they create improve access to, and use of, library collections, ease librarian workloads, and ultimately reduce library operating costs. Libraries have lost patrons, Gersch mentioned, to the web. Yet, an increasing amount of research content on the web demands payment of subscription fees, paid by libraries for the use of their patrons. Serials Solutions creates products that allow libraries to better manage their subscription information, to make the information more accessible to patrons. “We’re helping to make libraries relevant,” he explained.
A recent collaboration agreement between Serials Solutions and the HathiTrust collection illustrates another way their products will transform research. The collaboration will allow users of SummonTM, a Serials Solutions service, at libraries with Summon, to do full-text searches of the more than 8.4 million volumes (nearly three billion pages) of materials so far digitized, and preserved, by the HathiTrust.
The suite of Serials Solutions software services also includes AquaBrowser®, 360, KnowledgeWorks, and Ulrich’sTM. Honestly, Gersch acknowledged, many Fremonsters may never encounter these products. Customers consist primarily of academia and libraries, many of them small, local libraries and the very specialized academic libraries, and located all over the world. Serials Solutions designs products to serve all languages, with interfaces designed to the local language of the institution, and searches made available in both English and the local language. For that reason, Serials Solutions (which is a member of the ProQuest® family of companies) has employees located world-wide, although the hub of these operations remains here in Fremont.
As They Continue To Do What They Do
Gersch admitted that, as they prosper, they need quality people. The 11-year-old company seeks to hire programmers, software developers, program management, IT, and quality assurance operators – as well as librarians and those with backgrounds in librarian services, marketing people, and customer support staff, especially those with language skills
“Being here,” in Fremont, Gersch explained, “is a strength. I don’t want to spend an hour a day in the car,” commuting to the Eastside. He admitted that, “in Seattle, there are tons of technology companies,” but Serials Solutions, as a smaller company, offers prospective employees room to flourish, while working on “something you can feel good about.”
“More libraries are using our solution,” Gersch said, and “our growth is from getting our product out there.” As their products access information, rather than being defined by the finite amount of information available, “our expansion is not content related,” Gersch explained. Instead, they can continue to explore and develop their customer base, and who, and how, they can help.
“One of the differences,” in their approach, according to Gersch, is innovation. They seek to be the first to tackle problems their customers encounter, and assist in finding innovative solutions. By having librarians on their staff, Serials Solutions can better understand and communicate with their customers, and vice versa.
Gersch sees librarians – the people who chose to enter that field – most often as those who want to help others find answers. Ultimately, he explained, Serials Solutions wants to provide solutions to their customers that aid patrons in finding answers. And, they do this from their headquarters here, at the Center of the Universe.
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©2011 Kirby Lindsay. This column is protected by intellectual property laws, including U.S. copyright laws. Reproduction, adaptation or distribution without permission is prohibited.