Technology from Sage is consolidating Sciwheel into its Lean Library offering to launch as Lean Library Workspace. This will provide libraries and their users with an all-in-one offering that supports the entire research journey, from content discovery and access through to authoring work.
Technology from Sage acquired Sciwheel in 2022, with plans to integrate it with Lean Library to provide one uniquely comprehensive research tool that helps reduce student overwhelm when learning new skills and tools for their studies, while maximizing library budgets and time across the tools they support.
We’re excited to share that this is launching as Lean Library Workspace.
The new functionality that will be available in the Lean Library extension includes:
Current users can log in with the same credentials for uninterrupted access to their references and projects, with the same familiar user experience they know and love.
Users will need to download and use the Lean Library browser extension instead of the Sciwheel extension, but have until 31st August 2025 to do so, so as not to cause disruption during any research periods.
By moving to the Lean Library extension, users will unlock new content discovery and access benefits, including:
✅Saving up to 2 mins per search when discovering content online with streamlined access.
✅Unlocking instant and legal access to millions of Open Access articles and thousands of eBooks when hitting paywalls online.
✅Getting email alerts to updates to ‘Table of Contents’ to your chosen journals.
✅Building information literacy skills with article retraction alerts and trust ratings.
Sciwheel customer institutions can also choose to implement the full Lean Library offering to unlock wider benefits including; increasing usage of library content up to 40%, saving an estimated $90k per year with Open Access integrations, and promoting library branding, content, and customizable messages on any domain.
Libraries using Lean Library can choose to toggle on Lean Library Workspace for their institution so their users can create personal Lean Library Workspace accounts to:
✅ Instantly discover, access and save resources.
✅ Effortlessly manage references, annotate resources and collaborate on projects.
✅ Write, cite and author work smarter, faster.
This will embed libraries into further core stages of user workflows to gain actionable insights, help reduce student overwhelm, and better support researcher output.
Meanwhile, users of Lean Library’s free offering, Lean Library Open, can benefit from a more limited, freemium account to Lean Library Workspace – even if their institution does not subscribe.
Find out more about Lean Library Workspace on our product page and register for our upcoming launch webinar to see it in action.
OpenAthens Guest Post: Breaking Down Barriers to Knowledge with Library and Publisher Collaboration April 23, 2025We’re joined by Emma Wilson-Shaw, e-resource manager at OpenAthens for a guest blog post about library and publisher collaboration.
Read Emma’s commentary below:
As a cloud-based authentication service, OpenAthens is all about making access to digital resources easy and secure. It allows library patrons to discover and access online content wherever they choose. They can use any discovery platform they like and they need only a single set of credentials. In essence, it puts library users in the driving seat on a discovery journey without hold-ups, diversions or roadblocks.
Ultimately, libraries are customers with power. Ones that work closely with their vendors and publishers have an advantage in understanding challenges, overcoming technical issues and providing a great user experience for their patrons. Fostering these relationships makes sound sense and, in most cases, libraries will be pushing at an open door when they kick off those conversations. After all, happy customers mean vendors and publishers have fewer support tickets and an easier time when it comes to subscription renewals.
Collaboration gets things done
Last year OpenAthens and Technology from Sage ran a webinar encouraging partnerships between library professionals and IT specialists within their organisations to anticipate and overcome technical challenges. These days new technologies become mainstream fast, and closer cooperation can help hard-pressed library services to keep their systems up to date, and their staff’s skills current. Adoption of AI went from 0-60 in what felt like moments, and librarians with effective relationships with their IT departments will have been able to tap into IT knowhow and fast-track skills development.
In the same collaborative spirit, we strongly encourage libraries to collaborate with publishers. Complicated, multi-layered library systems don’t always integrate optimally with vendor platforms; when they don’t, resources can become harder to discover and use.
In these cases, it’s usually best to arrange a call between the parties, and we’re always keen to facilitate this. Our priority is to scope out a technical issue and fix it, and it helps if the relationship is already established. Typically, a call will involve our library customer, OpenAthens technical support and often me as well.
There isn’t always a quick fix, however. Where this is the case, it helps to be having honest conversations to understand the vendor or publisher’s priorities and make sure they know the library’s difficulty. We may be aware that the issue is more widespread and urgent than the publisher thinks, and relay this to them. And if the library is part of a purchasing consortium, we might be able to leverage its buying power to encourage a speedier resolution.
Advice for libraries
Taking the first step towards developing closer working relationships is simple. Talk to your account manager at the publisher or vendor, if you have one. If you don’t, contact your OpenAthens support provider, and we can bring all parties together.
By understanding each other’s needs, requirements, struggles and challenges, libraries and publishers can work together towards shared goals of making the library end user experience the best it can be.
Publishers and vendors benefit from their licensed resources being available to the people who are entitled to them. And the library can offer a personalized, added-value service that is measurable to ensure future business decisions regarding resource management and product development are data-driven with anonymized user data.
