FAST and the University of Bielefeld form strategic partnership

Citation

(2004), "FAST and the University of Bielefeld form strategic partnership", The Electronic Library, Vol. 22 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/el.2004.26322aab.009

FAST and the University of Bielefeld form strategic partnership

FAST and the University of Bielefeld form strategic partnership

Bielefeld University Library and Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), a developer of enterprise search and real-time alerting technologies, have announced that they have agreed to collaborate in further promoting the development and implementation of search technology for the benefit of the online academic information landscape. The collaboration will include the deployment of FAST Data Search at Bielefeld University Library and a partnership with FAST to further educate academic libraries worldwide on the benefits of online information access.

Funded by the North Rhine-Westphalia State Ministry for Education and Science, the Federal Ministry, and the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), Bielefeld University Library is promoting and running projects to explore and develop tools and systems that improve access to the increasing number of electronic resources. One major project driven by Bielefeld University Library is the development of the "Digital Library North Rhine-Westphalia", which offers integrated access to electronic resources recorded in local and remote online library catalogues, as well as to licensed electronic resources such as electronic journals and databases and to document delivery services.

"FAST is the industry leader in innovative search and information retrieval technology, and we anticipate many exiting developments in the digital library sector as a result of this partnership", said Dr Norbert Lossau, Director, Bielefeld University Library. "FAST's scalable enterprise search technology offers digital libraries the ideal solution for providing researchers easy navigation and quick access to information with the highest relevancy, regardless of the data form or format".

With over 8,500 electronic journals available in full-text versions, the Bielefeld University Library provides its users with search for catalogues, multimedia textbooks, subject portals and a library catalogue with both electronic and printed documents recorded. FAST's scalable and flexible search technology offers the University of Bielefeld a common search platform to quickly search this vast amount of data to retrieve the most relevant information, where also the available metadata information is fully exploited.

"Bielefeld University Library has a reputation as a driving force for developing and introducing new electronic services for academic libraries, and FAST Data Search offers an excellent solution platform for digital libraries", commented Dr John M. Lervik, chief executive officer. "We are pleased to be working closely with the University of Bielefeld and Bielefeld University Library to further support the use of enterprise search technology for the advancement of digital libraries".

FAST Data Search enables organizations to develop information transparency and utilization across organizational units and geographical areas. This results in improved efficiency and ROI through collaboration, information sharing, and real-time data monitoring and filtering. The FAST Data Search product suite supplies a complete information retrieval solution ideal for key vertical markets including financial services; government; media and publishing; life sciences and pharmaceuticals; and high-end e-commerce applications. A wide range of Global 3000 customers and partners, including AT&T, CareerBuilder, Chordiant, CIGNA, Dell, FirstGov.gov (GSA), Freeserve, IBM, LexisNexis, The National Library of Norway, Overture, Reed Elsevier, Reuters, SBC Communications, and T-Online currently use FAST's powerful enterprise search technology solutions.

To learn more about FAST's solutions for the digital library segment, Dr John M. Lervik, FAST's chief executive officer, is providing a paper at the 7th International Bielefeld Conference (3-5 February 2004), a major international forum for academic libraries. Following the conference Bielefeld University Library and FAST will co-organize a technology workshop "Intelligent Search Engine & Navigation Technology in Digital Libraries and Information Portals" (http://conference.ub.uni-bielefeld.de).