COPENHAGEN, Denmark, January, 2003--Fujitsu Invia, the exclusive distributor of Ex Libris products in Sweden, is pleased to announce that a cooperative of Swedish county libraries, the SIM project, has licensed MetaLib and SFX. The main goal of the project is to develop and evaluate a dynamic search portal with context-sensitive linking. Ultimately, this portal will provide the cooperating libraries with new structures for information and media access and free interlibrary loans in the southern region of Sweden.
The three-year project is being financed by the Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs, which has already approved the first stage. Länsbiblioteket i Sydost, the county library in southeast Sweden, will be responsible for coordinating the project.
The SIM (New Structures for Information and Media Support) project is a collaborative effort between six county libraries in southern Sweden; these libraries provide the public libraries in the region with guidance, development assistance, and training. Together, the county libraries service 126 communities with a total of 3.8 million inhabitants.
MetaLib is the Ex Libris solution for managing a hybrid library environment. Serving as a portal for information resources selected by the library, MetaLib is a gateway to any type of resource, locally hosted or off-site, free or licensed. MetaLib provides federated search capabilities that enable users to search simultaneously across heterogeneous resources, and personalization features that facilitate users' management of their research environment. MetaLib is fully integrated with SFX to allow onward navigation from records that MetaLib has retrieved.
SFX is an innovative tool for providing users with links to context-sensitive services defined by their institution on the basis of its e-collections and policies. Such services, which are dynamically created, can include links to the full text of an article, an OPAC (to check local holdings), preferred document-delivery suppliers, Web-based resources, local information repositories, and a range of other services.
About Ex Libris
Ex Libris is a leading worldwide developer of high-performance applications for libraries, information centers, and researchers. A multinational company, Ex Libris has offices around the world. ALEPH, the Ex Libris integrated library solution, has been installed at over 750 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 320 customers in 23 countries. The DigiTool solution for constructing digital collections as components of an overall digital strategy rounds out the Ex Libris product suite. For more information about Ex Libris, see www.exlibrisgroup.com
