Ebsco Information Services, LLC

Ebsco Information Services, LLC, a for-profit limited liability company owned by Ebsco Industries Inc. and headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, provides electronic database subscriptions, journal access, medical and nursing literature collections, library management services, and identity and access management platforms to federal agencies as a prime contractor, competing full-and-open without set-aside designations.

Ebsco operates across a diversified portfolio of subscription and library services delivered through firm fixed-price task orders and definitive contracts. The company's concrete capability set includes access to peer-reviewed academic and medical databases (Academic Search Complete, MEDLINE Ultimate, CINAHL, Business Source Complete, EconLit with Full Text, PsycARTICLES), specialized research platforms (Web of Science, Scopus, JSTOR), nursing and allied health literature collections, e-books, test preparation databases and platforms, subscription management and serial consolidation services, document delivery, and authentication and access management tools such as OpenAthens. Representative prime contracts span the Department of Veterans Affairs (a $25.7 million definitive contract for CINAHL Ultimate, Medline Complete, and Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection subscriptions to the VHA system, awarded June 2026); the National Library of Medicine (a $54 million single-award IDIQ for subscription services covering approximately 6,000 subscription titles from multinational and non-commercial publishers, awarded July 2026); the Defense Health Agency (a $9.9 million delivery order for Dental and Oral Sciences Source and MEDLINE Ultimate subscriptions, awarded August 2024); and Air Education and Training Command (a $3.7 million definitive contract for a fully integrated test preparation platform with practice tests and exam preparation resources, awarded September 2024).

Customer concentration is anchored by health and medical research agencies. The National Library of Medicine and Department of Veterans Affairs combine for $168.8 million in potential value across eight awards (40% of the combined portfolio), with the Health and Human Services National Institutes of Health tracking at $133.9 million across four awards. The Department of the Treasury Departmental Offices ranks third by award count at 22 awards worth $15 million combined potential value, driven by recurring serial management task orders. The company serves 49 distinct federal agencies across a recent footprint spanning the Defense Health Agency, Department of Justice, Department of Defense Education Activity, Smithsonian Institution, National Science Foundation, Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, and numerous defense medical and education components.

Ebsco holds multiple significant vehicle positions. The Library of Congress FEDLINK Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity contract (LCFDL23D0067), a $102 million single-award IDIQ awarded August 15, 2023, with an ultimate completion date of August 31, 2026, anchors 30 task orders worth $28 million in combined potential value and serves as the primary vehicle through which Ebsco delivers subscriptions and electronic resource services government-wide. The General Services Administration Federal Supply Schedule contract (Special Item Number 511120 for periodicals and online book services), a $36 million multiple-award vehicle awarded May 2, 2025, extending through May 1, 2030, carries 14 task orders valued at $35 million and enables direct federal agency ordering from a published price list covering over 70 research databases. The Department of the Treasury serial management Indefinite Delivery Contract (2032H323D00002), a $3.7 million multiple-award IDIQ awarded July 6, 2023, running through July 5, 2027, has generated 13 task orders worth $1 million. Single-award Blanket Purchase Agreements include a $5.4 million library subscription services vehicle with the Division of Administrative Services (January 31, 2025 through January 30, 2031), a $24 million subscription management services BPA with the International Development Finance Corporation (April 27, 2026 through April 26, 2036), a $54 million single-award contract with the National Library of Medicine for biomedical literature subscriptions (July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2030), and smaller regional VA facility BPAs. The Library of Congress FEDLINK vehicle and the GSA Schedule collectively represent the majority of Ebsco's federal subscription delivery infrastructure.

Activity has grown significantly—three awards in 2022 to 46 in 2024—with 33 awards worth $43.3 million in combined potential value completing within the next twenty-four months and facing recompete exposure. The vendor competes exclusively as a prime contractor (100% of awards are prime; no subcontractor activity appears in the source). This posture signals that Ebsco builds its own delivery teams rather than partnering as a sub and does not function as a feeder supplier to larger primes. The Service Contract Inventory dataset, covering contracts above the $150,000 reporting threshold in FY2023–FY2024, reflects $5.9 million in invoiced federal services revenue ($1.8 million in FY2023, $4.1 million in FY2024) with zero FTE reporting at contract-level granularity, indicating that most Ebsco activity falls below the SCI threshold or is goods-based (subscriptions and database access) rather than services with hourly labor reporting. When SCI labor pricing is derived from invoiced dollars and contractor hours, median government-paid rates run around $50,204/hr, with senior labor reaching into the $96,000/hr range and lower-cost work at approximately $10,129/hr. The SCI dataset shows Ebsco performing 100% of reported hours with no named subcontractors, aligning with the company's full-and-open prime posture.

The award classification profile is dominated by information services and periodical subscriptions: 73 awards are coded to NAICS Web Search Portals and All Other Information Services; 16 to Periodical Publishers; 12 to Libraries and Archives. PSC coding emphasizes Newspapers and Periodicals (31 awards), IT Platform-as-a-Service database and middleware services (19 awards), and Administrative Support for information retrieval (15 awards). This concentration reflects Ebsco's core business—licensed access to commercial databases and journals delivered as a subscription service—rather than custom development or consulting labor. The company operates without small business certifications and competes directly with other commercial information service providers on price, database breadth, and access management capability.