Return on Investment
This year NC LIVE is proud to provide member libraries with a fourteenfold return on investment, surpassing the thirteenfold ROI of our last resource cycle. This means that for every one dollar that NC LIVE spends, North Carolina communities get access to fourteen dollars of resources.
Selection Criteria
All resource selection decisions are made by the Librarians' Council, based on recommendations of the Resource Advisory Committee.
All selections were based on the following key criteria:
Value across COIs | Cost per use | Accessibility |
Quantity of content for $ | User experience | Change cost to community |
Quality of content for $ | ||
Process and Timeline
In order to ensure the best possible suite of resources for our communities, we selected resources based on community input and expert assessment. We solicited recommendations in a survey open to every library staff person at every member institution across the state. Every recommendation was considered and assessed by the Resource Advisory Committee (RAC), which consists of three representatives from each of NC LIVE’s four Communities of Interest (COIs). Recommendations from the RAC were then reviewed and approved by the Librarians’ Council (LC), which consists of COI representatives, committee chairs, and the State Librarian of NC. You can read more about the selection process and timeline at nclive.org/about/projects/resource-selection.
Content
Printer-friendly version: PDF version of 2024-2026 Resource Updates
| RESOURCE | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|
| Biblioboard eBook Platform | E-book platform used to host NC LIVE’s HomeGrown eBooks Collection. BiblioBoard delivers all media types, works across desktop and mobile platforms, and offers a modern user experience. |
| CQ Researcher | Reports on issues shaping our world, with in-depth coverage of political and social issues, such as health, education, the environment, technology, and the U.S. economy. |
| Credo Reference | Premier virtual reference collection including encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases, images, audio files, and videos in a wide expanse of subject areas. |
| Data-Axle Reference Solutions | Reference and research tool providing instant, real-time access to accurate, in-depth information on 24 million U.S. businesses and 235 million U.S. residents. Data-Axle makes it faster and easier to find new business opportunities, research executives and companies, find news articles, conduct job searches, research papers, locate addresses and phone numbers, conduct market research and much more. |
| EBSCO CINAHL Plus with Full Text | Premier database of nursing and allied health journals with additional materials that include nursing dissertations, conference proceedings, evidence-based care sheets, audiovisuals, and continuing education modules. |
| EBSCO MasterFILE with Consumer Reports | Popular collection of product reviews and recommendations for cars, appliances, electronics, personal finance, and health information. |
| EBSCO Novelist Plus | Readers’ advisory resource covering fiction, nonfiction, and audiobook recommendations. |
| Ferguson’s Career Guidance | Career database that enables users to explore industries and careers, plan their education, and research best practices for résumés, cover letters, interviewing, networking, and salaries/benefits. Includes articles, career advice blogs, and streaming video. |
| Films on Demand | Thousands of high quality videos on business & economics, health & medicine, humanities & social sciences, and science & mathematics, as well as travel and fitness programming, home and how-to videos, indie films, and popular music performances. Includes Oscar, Emmy and Peabody award winning documentaries, interviews, instructional and vocational training videos, historical speeches and newsreels. |
| Gale Literature Resource Center | An extensive literature resource collection with articles, critical essays, topic overviews, full-text works, and biographies covering authors, their works, and literary movements. |
| Gale Ebooks Platform | Platform fee for the Gale Ebooks platform hosts permanent ebooks purchased by NC LIVE from Gale, and any locally purchased Gale ebook content from libraries. |
| Historic NC Digital Newspapers | 3.5 million digitized pages of historic newspaper content from the North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill. |
| Just for Kids Streaming Video | Streaming video collection which provides a thoroughly kid-safe, advertisement-free media platform. Includes the educational videos children want to watch—Sesame Street, The Electric Company, The Fabulous World of Dr. Seuss, Franklin, and thousands more. |
| LearningExpress Library and PrepSTEP | Suite of highly-acclaimed eLearning solutions which provide interactive tutorials, practice tests, e-books, flashcards and articles for academic skill-building, standardized test preparation, career development and more. |
| Morningstar | Investment research center that includes research and independent opinions on thousands of mutual funds, stocks, and hundreds of ETFs. |
| ProQuest Custom Collection | Our current ProQuest aggregated collection, which covers general reference, education, entrepreneurship, global regions, library science, natural sciences, news, and numerous health and social science fields. For a complete list of included resources, see below. |
| ProQuest Summon | Discovery service to increase usage of library resources by offering patrons a contemporary search interface. |
| Transparent Language | Provides a fun, effective, and engaging experience for learners of all levels looking to build their listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in a foreign language. With over 110 languages to choose from, including English for speakers of over 30 languages, there is something for every learner. Transparent Language Online combines robust courses, supplemental vocabulary, extensive grammar resources, and mobile apps for a complete language-learning experience. |
| RESOURCE | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|
| Social Explorer | Visualization and data-mapping tool with hundreds of thousands of data indicators and across demography, economy, health, education, religion, crime and more. |
| RESOURCE | DESCRIPTION | REPLACED BY | RATIONALE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cypress Resume | Easy-to-use résumé building tool with a built-in writing process and automatic formatting. | Free resume tools, such as NCWorks Online: ncworks.gov | Low usage |
| Gale in Context: Biography | A biography database which merges Gale’s authoritative reference content, including Lives & Perspectives, with periodicals and multimedia. | Similar content is available through Credo Reference and Gale Literature Resource Center | High cost-per-use |
My library has its own subscription to one of the newly-added resources. Can I get a refund now that NC LIVE is providing it to the whole consortium?
We have negotiated with vendors to ensure that any existing subscriptions that member libraries hold to new NC LIVE resources will be prorated and refunded appropriately. You can contact your vendor directly to initiate this process.
Can libraries get early access to a resource before it launches on January 1?
Early access will be available for training purposes. Check out NC LIVE training opportunities, such as webinars and tutorials, at nclive.org/instruction.
Some of these resources are new to me. What opportunities are available for training on the new resources?
Our Instruction Librarian is in the process of organizing the following instructional opportunities for our membership and will announce them as they become available:
- Vendor webinars
- Online hands-on training
- Tutorials
You can always check current instruction offerings at nclive.org/instruction, or sign up for the NC LIVE Listserv to receive announcements about new training opportunities.
How long are the contracts for?
Unless otherwise noted, all contracts will end on Dec 31, 2026.
I use EZProxy to enable offsite access to NC LIVE resources. How/when/who will configure my EZProxy to enable these new resources? Will I get MARC records for the new resources?
As we get closer to launching the new resources, we’ll be sending out an email for each new resource with proxy information and MARC records.
Will there be any changes in NC LIVE's perpetual access collections?
NC LIVE will continue to provide perpetual access to the following collections of own materials:
- ABC-CLIO E-book Collection
- Chadwyck-Healey Poetry Collections
- Credo Contemporary Issues & Controversies Ebooks
- eBooks on EBSCOhost
- Ebook Central Permanent Collection
- Gale Ebooks
- HomeGrown Ebooks Collection
- hoopla ebooks and audiobooks
- JSTOR Ebooks
- NC LIVE Video Collection hosted on Films on Demand Platform
- North American Women's Letters & Diaries
- Omnigraphics Health Reference Sourcebooks
What specific resources are included in NC LIVE's ProQuest Custom Collection?
- ABI/INFORM Collection
- Accounting, Tax & Banking Collection
- Advanced Technologies & Aerospace Database
- Agricultural & Environmental Science Collection
- Arts & Humanities Database
- Asian & European Business Collection
- Australia & New Zealand Database
- Biological Science Database
- Business Market Research Collection
- Canadian Business & Current Affairs Database
- Canadian Newsstream
- Career & Technical Education Database
- Computer Science Database
- Consumer Health Database
- Continental Europe Database
- Criminal Justice Database
- Digital Sanborn Maps (1867-1970) for North Carolina
- Earth, Atmospheric Aquatic Science Database
- East & South Asia Database
- East Europe, Central Europe Database
- Ebook Central Academic and Public Library Complete
- Education Database
- eLibrary
- Engineering Database
- Entrepreneurship Database
- Global Breaking Newswires
- Health & Medical Collection
- Healthcare Administration Database
- HeritageQuest
- Historic North Carolina Digital Newspaper Collection
- History Study Center
- India Database
- International Newsstream
- Latin America & Iberia Database
- Library Science Database
- Linguistics Database
- Materials Science Database
- Middle East & Africa Database
- Military Database
- New York Times
- Nursing & Allied Health Database
- Political Science Database
- ProQuest Central
- ProQuest Learning: Literature
- ProQuest Research Companion
- ProQuest Research Library
- Psychology Database
- Public Health Database
- Religion Database
- Science Database
- SIRS Discoverer
- SIRS Issues Researcher
- Social Science Database
- Sociology Database
- Statistical Abstract of the United States
- Telecommunications Database
- Turkey Database
- U.K. & Ireland Database
- US Newsstream
- Wall Street Journal
- Washington Post