News from Ex Libris

Citation

(2003), "News from Ex Libris", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 37 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/prog.2003.28037dab.003

News from Ex Libris

News from Ex Libris

(a) University of California Libraries unveil new Melvyl catalogue

The California Digital Library has launched the new online Melvyl catalogue, allowing library patrons (faculty, students, staff, and other researchers), as well as the general public, to search a state-of-the-art catalogue of the millions of books, journals, and other items held by the libraries of the University of California (UC) campuses.

The Melvyl catalogue has a new format and design and offers users a variety of enhanced features with completely updated data for the holdings of the UC system. Melvyl (melvyl.cdlib.org) is also available via the California Digital Library (CDL) Web site (www.cdlib.org), which contains information about the catalogue and other digital collections and services. The catalogue is based on the union catalogue module of the ALEPH 500 library automation system developed by Ex Libris, a leading developer of library systems worldwide. The Melvyl catalogue contains over 23 million records for material held by the libraries of the ten campuses of the UC system. The database is updated continually as material is ordered, received, and catalogued by the libraries. Material from libraries of selected university partners is also represented, including records from the Hastings School of Law, the Center for Research Libraries, the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, the California Academy of Sciences Library, the California Historical Society Library, California State Library and the Graduate Theological Union Library.

Melvyl contains entries for many materials that are in formats other than books and journals (for example, manuscripts, maps, visual media, microforms, and government documents) owned by the UC Libraries. In addition, predefined subsets of the catalogue have been created to allow dedicated searching for online resources, musical scores, and sound recordings. Among the important new features that Melvyl offers are:

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  more flexible search options, including phrase and proximity searching;

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  browsing by major indexes, including author, title, subject, and call number;

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  expanded limiting and sorting of search results;

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  the display of foreign language materials in their native language characters, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, and Arabic; and

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  the ability to return to previous searches and combine, review, or save them in a personal workspace.

While the new search and display features are available to all users of Melvyl, both within and outside UC, an additional feature gives UC faculty, students and staff the ability to borrow material from another campus, if unavailable at their home campus, via a simple “request” button. Daniel Greenstein, executive director of the CDL and UC’s University Librarian for Systemwide Library Planning, considers Melvyl an important development that continues the UC tradition of library collaboration, allowing the many libraries to be treated effectively as one large library by the UC community.

Greenstein recently commented:

The California Digital Library was founded on the realisation that digital services remove boundaries and allow greater collaboration at lower collective costs. Patrons of UC’s many great libraries want to draw upon scholarship that the libraries collect and manage, regardless of their particular location. Through enhanced searching and presentation, by merging records from many libraries and by linking from the catalogue record to electronic versions of the source material wherever possible, Melvyl makes material easier to locate and easier to share. The collective holdings of the University now accrue more directly to each campus and to any student or researcher.

Cristina Campbell, manager of the project to implement Melvyl, explained the history of the new system:

The CDL drew upon staff from throughout the system to define the need for and functions of a new catalogue. The process has taken several years, which is understandable given the complexity and scope of the UC system and its library holdings. Basing the catalogue on the ALEPH product from Ex Libris gave us a great head start, but we undertook significant co-development with them to meet UC’s needs. It is great to be able to announce its availability and to share the moment with literally hundreds of contributors from throughout UC and at Ex Libris.

According to Oren Beit-Arie, acting president of Ex Libris (USA), Inc., and President of its Information Services Division:

The rollout of Melvyl is a major milestone for CDL and Ex Libris. While union catalogues do not represent a new paradigm for Ex Libris, the scope, complexity, and scale of Melvyl represent new challenges, with more than 23 million titles, hundreds of thousands of updates per month, thousands of simultaneous users, and various integration and interoperability points with other UC and CDL components. Based on ALEPH 500, Melvyl introduces new union catalogue concepts and architectural design to meet these challenges. We are truly proud to be associated with CDL and Melvyl as CDL launches this new service.

The California Digital Library was established as a digital “co-library” complementing and collaborating with the physical libraries on the UC campuses. Founded by UC President Richard Atkinson, it opened to the public in January 1999. Organisationally housed at the UC Office of the President in Oakland, California, the CDL provides a centralised framework to share efficiently materials held by UC, to provide greater and easier access to digital content, and to join with researchers in developing new tools and innovations for scholarly communication. The University of California is one of the largest, most prestigious teaching and research institutions in the world, whose current faculty includes 20 Nobel laureates and 300 members of the National Academy of Sciences. Over 300,000 students, faculty, and staff are located at UC campuses in Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz. A new campus in Merced, the first new American research university of the twenty-first century, is scheduled to open officially in 2004.

(b) Napier University in Scotland buys Ex Libris suite of library software

Napier University in Edinburgh has awarded Ex Libris (UK) a contract for the implementation of the Ex Libris library software products ALEPH 500, MetaLib, and SFX to replace a Dynix system. MetaLib, the portal product for the discovery of, and access to, information resources in hybrid environments, and SFX, a context-sensitive reference linking tool based on the Ex Libris-pioneered Open URL standard, will go live in early 2004.

Napier was first established as a college in 1964 and became a university in 1992 (www.napier.ac.uk). Further expansion occurred in 1996 with the integration of nursing education into higher education. The University has about 11,500 students following a range of programmes presented by four faculties: Arts and Social Science; Engineering and Computing; Health and Life Sciences; and the Napier University Business School. Chris Pinder, Director of Learning Information Services at Napier University, commented on the choice of the Ex Libris products and services as follows:

In selecting a replacement library management solution, we placed much emphasis on the benefits to customers. The primary focus for our new library management system is to encourage independence of use and easy access to e-resources; it offers, as well, an excellent platform for eventual integration with our developing VLE/MLE and, of course, a more efficient work process and improved management reporting for staff. In selecting ALEPH 500, MetaLib, and SFX, we will be ideally placed to realise these goals.

Julie Booth, managing director of Ex Libris (UK), expressed her satisfaction with the rapidly growing customer base in Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland:

Our success is based on the performance of our future-oriented products and, in no small measure, on the proficiency and hard work of our British and international teams.

Ex Libris is a leading world-wide developer of high-performance applications for libraries, information centres, and researchers. A multinational company, Ex Libris has offices around the world. ALEPH, the Ex Libris integrated library solution, has been installed at over 800 sites in 50 countries. MetaLib, the information portal for library collections, and SFX, the context-sensitive linking solution for heterogeneous electronic resources in the scholarly information environment, have been purchased by more than 370 customers in 24 countries. DigiTool, a solution for constructing digital collections as components of an overall digital strategy, rounds out the Ex Libris product suite.

For further information please contact: Ex Libris (UK) Ltd, Bridge House, 119-23 Station Rd, Hayes, Middlesex UB3 4BX, UK. Tel: +44 (0) 20 8561 5614; Fax: +44 (0) 20 8561 5634; E-mail: exlibris@exlibris.co.uk; URL: www.exlibris.co.uk