News from Sirsi

Citation

(2002), "News from Sirsi", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 36 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/prog.2002.28036bab.005

News from Sirsi

News from Sirsi

Sirsi and DRA complete merger

Sirsi Corporation has announced that Sirsi and Data Research Associates (DRA) have successfully integrated their operations following a careful internal evaluation after the acquisition of DRA by Sirsi in August 2001. In future the company will:

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  be known as Sirsi;

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  have an integrated management team;

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  have a future technology strategy which will focus on revolutionary solutions for serving library users while standardising integrated library system (ILS) development efforts on the open modular Unicorn Library Management system.

Although no additional development of the DRA Taos system will be carried out following the release of Version 1.2 in early 2002, Sirsi will incorporate many of the visionary concepts of Taos into future products. The decision to standardise on the Unicorn platform has been taken because Taos still requires significant development effort to complete base-level ILS functionality and Unicorn is already an industry standard, comprehensive and scaleable system that provides full ILS functionality to all types and sizes of library throughout the world.

Sirsi's vision for the future focuses on continued development of technologies for serving library users. Specifically it will continue to develop the electronic library concept embodied in the iBistro/iLink and Web2 products.

Sligo County Library chooses Sirsi

Sligo County Library in Ireland has chosen Sirsi's Unicorn Library Management system to provide its first integrated library management system and the iBistro Electronic Library to provide users with online access to library holdings and other resources.

The Sligo County Library has five branches and serves a population of approximately 56,000. Its collection of about 150,000 items includes the Yeats Collection, a unique and internationally important reference source for students of the life and work of W.B. Yeats and his brother Jack B. Yeats, as well as a Local Studies collection documenting the rich history of Sligo County. The Unicorn system will provide the library with fully integrated management of cataloguing, authority control, circulation, acquisitions and materials booking. Sirsi's SmartPORT cataloguing utility will be used to capture data from Z39.50 sources worldwide. Using iBistro, borrowers will be able to place holds, see lists of items on loan and renew items.

University of Toronto chooses Sirsi

The University of Toronto Libraries, the third ranked system in the Association of Research Libraries, has chosen the Sirsi Link system to provide their integrated library system of the future. The libraries are upgrading from the current DRA Classic system to Link. The Link system is expected to go live by mid-2002 and will be installed on an IBM platform under Oracle. Peter Clinton, Director of IT services for the University of Toronto Libraries, noted:

Sirsi's Link system offers an excellent "fit" for a library as large and complex as the University of Toronto's, which comprises more than 40 individual libraries with more than 13 million volumes. Prior to selecting Link, we undertook a thorough system evaluation process to determine if it would meet all of our requirements and to ensure that there were no "fatal flaws". It came through with flying colours.

The University of Toronto is Canada's largest university, with more than 55,000 students and more than 13,000 faculty and staff. In addition to more than 13 million holdings, the library system currently provides access to a vast array of electronic resources including 13,000 full-text journals, 7,000 books, 450 indexes and abstracts, and 200 newspapers.

Sirsi and Wilson form an alliance

H.W. Wilson, provider of online and print bibliographic and biographical reference materials, will provide Sirsi's iBistro Electronic Library with Wilson's Book Review Digest, a database of fiction and non-fiction book review excerpts from 1984. The Sirsi-Wilson alliance will enable libraries to supply users with online access to reviews and abstracts of a wide variety of material.

For further information please contact Sirsi, Unicorn House, Station Close, Potters Bar, Herts EN6 3JW, UK. Tel: +44(0) 1707 858000; Fax: +44(0) 1707 858111; E-mail: nick@sirsi.co.uk; URL: www.sirsi.co.uk