ILSOS Illinois State Library Database Subscriptions

The Illinois Secretary of State (ILSOS) is seeking to procure library databases that will provide digital versions of resources, such as newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals, and eBooks, to enable libraries across the State of Illinois to give their communities online access to the full text content. The vendor shall provide databases containing a diverse set of digital content that can be accessed across the various discovery systems used by Illinois libraries. The resulting contract will have an initial term of 3 years, with 7 one-year renewal options available. The RFP outlines detailed requirements for the database content areas, including general interest resources, PreK-12 educational resources, academic (undergraduate) resources, health resources, business resources, reference eBooks, and test preparation/career resources. Pricing should be submitted on an a la carte basis by each content area, as well as for packaged solutions. Only proposals receiving at least 80% of the technical evaluation points will be eligible for price evaluation and award. The State reserves the right to award in whole or in part based on the responsive and responsible offer that best meets the specified criteria.

This is a single award procurement, and the State does not anticipate allowing for additional extensions beyond the March 25th deadline. Nine vendors responded to the bid, with EBSCO Information Services LLC selected as the lowest priced responsive and responsible bidder for the three-year initial term with seven one-year renewal options. The total award amount for the three-year initial term is $10,286,265, with an estimated $26,034,794.41 for the seven-year renewal period. The unsuccessful bidders were World Book, Sirsi Corporation, Infobase Holdings, Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, ProQuest, TeachingBooks.net, Cengage Learning, and SAGE Publications.