SUBSCRIPTION - PROQUEST CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS DIGITAL COLLECTIONS

The HQ/HECSA Library intends to award a sole-source contract to ProQuest LLC, a part of Clarivate, for the acquisition of the Congressional Hearings Digital Collections A-J and Unpublished Hearings Collections A-C. This procurement is in accordance with the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.302-1, which provides for sole-source justification when the required supplies or services are available from only one responsible source and no other type of supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements. This is not a request for competitive proposals. Interested parties may identify their interest and capability to respond to this requirement no later than 28 September 2024. Responses must include sufficient information to demonstrate the ability to meet the Government's requirements. A determination by the Government not to compete this requirement based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. Information received will be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement. The period of performance will be 30 September 2024 to 29 September 2025. An option year is expected. Unless and until another source is identified, no competition is sought. PROQUEST is the only know source for this subscription. This is a special notice prepared in accordance with the requirements of FAR Section 5.2 Synopses of Proposed Contract Actions. There will be no posting of a solicitation. 519290 - Web Search Portals and All Other Information Services. However, any firm that believes it can compete this requirement may give written notice to the Contracting Officer within Fifteen (15) days of publication of this announcement. Supporting evidence must be in sufficient detail to demonstrate the ability to comply with the requirement. Responses received will be evaluated: however, a determination by the Government to compete the proposed procurement based on the responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers intends on proceeding with awarding a fixed price purchase order to EBSCO Publishing for its services. *********************************************************** ProQuest LLC, a part of Clarivate (ProQuest) aggregates source material from third-party publishers and creates associated abstracts, indexes, transcripts, and other proprietary elements for such material to make up our products and services. The databases provided by Proquest are derivative works as defined under the Copyright Act of 1976, Title 17 U.S.C. and are subject to separate copyright protection. ProQuest is the sole holder of the copyright in the ProQuest-created products and services as a collective or derivative. ProQuest also hosts and distributes certain third-party databases on its platforms, in some cases adding value by enabling access to associated full-text articles, transcripts, and data normalization to provide a consistent user experience across multiple resources using ProQuest's own proprietary online search engine. Additionally, ProQuest is the proprietary owner of the on-line platforms that form a substantial part of the ProQuest, Alexander Street, RefWorks, and its other on-line information and research services. As a result, only ProQuest can provide the content combined with the proprietary platform and user experience for the following products/services: Congressional Hearings Digital Collections A-J Unpublished Hearings Collections A-C ProQuest is an online vendor of full-text documents and accompanying maps. Users enter search queries and retrieve documents that are displayed as digital images of the original document. Queries can be as wide or as specific as the searcher chooses to make them. Proquest has the largest online Federal legislative indexed and abstracted content archives in the US. It has the most comprehensive full-text coverage of United States Legislative and Executive Branch content from 1789 to the present of any known vendor. ProQuest is the ONLY source for a comprehensive, complete, and cross-searchable collection of congressional publications from 1789-present. Includes searchable PDFs for ALL congressional publications, including historic full text not available anywhere. HQ/HECSA Library has had a long-standing relationship and subscriptions with Proquest including the Congressional Committee Hearings portion of their resources. ProQuest Congressional Committee Published and Unpublished Hearings spans a number of years and is the only resource with historic published Hearings, as well as, Unpublished House and Senate Hearings. Featuring single point access and original abstracts describing content contained in source document. HQ/HECSA Library intends to fill in current gaps in our holdings and purchase those Congressional Hearings not already owned for perpetual access through Proquest platform. Moreover, by maintaining subscriptions and increasing holdings, our users have privileges that would be unavailable with a new vendor. For example, most database content is copyrighted, which with most vendors means it cannot be shared outside the immediate organization without violating the contract. As part of our long-term subscription relationship, HECSA has negotiated the right to share Proquest documents with USACE employees in districts and field offices, a privilege that would not be possible with another vendor of the same content.