Ireland – Database systems – Voluntary Ex-Ante Transparency (VEAT) Notice for Award of Contract to Optimum Education & Financial Solutions Limited for subscription to World Book Print and Digital Products.

Dublin City Council gives notice to invoke Article 32.2(b) (iii) for a derogation from public procurement whereby the works, supplies or services can be provided only by a particular economic operator for the protection of exclusive rights, including intellectual property rights. Dublin City Council intends to award a contract to IBIS World Limited for 3 years. The maximum value of of this contract is €107,523 ex VAT. World Book print and digital products provide authoritative and trustworthy content on almost every topic to learners of all ages, from early learning to primary and post-primary readers. World Book Online (WBO) is an interactive resource offering an immersive learning experience to learners at every level. It provides access to over 30,000 articles, 6,000 web links, 400 interactive maps and more. The articles are compiled by experts in their fields, ensuring reliable and accurate content. The online encyclopaedia uses age-appropriate vocabulary and sentence structures, as well as a variety of multimedia, to help learners at any age to gain a strong understanding of the topics they want to explore. Library members are offered different points of access to this resource as follows: WBO Early Learning is a dedicated resource for pre-schoolers and children in early primary education. It teaches young learners essential skills for preschool and Kindergarten including letters, numbers, and early math concepts such as counting and classification. It facilitates learning for very young readers through stories, games, videos, and interactive colouring pages to make the educational experience fun and engaging, and it uses image-based navigation tools to facilitate pre-literate engagement and independent use. It also contains guidance for parents on how to use the resource with their children. WBO Kids is a reference resource developed especially for older primary school children. It is designed to help young learners find information quickly and to develop online skills and digital literacy. It features thousands of language-appropriate articles with illustrations, videos, interactive maps, and a variety of educational activities, games, and science projects. It is an essential resource to support home, library and school study and learning for primary school children. WBO Student is a reliable, accurate and up-to-date resource catering to secondary school students. It includes all the articles from the print versions of the World Book encyclopaedia, plus thousands of additional articles, learning resources, and research tools. It contains a variety of multimedia to engage and encourage young people in an immersive learning experience. This resource also has an open Dyslexic Font Feature. It is an essential resource to support home, library and school study and learning for secondary school students. Both WBO Kids and WBO Student products have translator options available to read the content in English and in several other languages. This is an essential feature in the context of changing populations in Ireland, and it allows children and parents for whom English is not their first language to engage more fully and easily with learning and education. WBO also offers a series of how-to videos and training webinars as well as written tutorials and other support materials to help students, parents, librarians and teachers make best use of the resource.