Santiago, Chile - December 14, 2004 -- After carrying out a detailed evaluation of portal systems, Alerta al Conocimiento S.A. has signed a contract with Grupo Sistemas Lógicos for MetaLib® and SFX. Grupo Sistemas Lógicos is the exclusive Ex Libris distributor for all the Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America.
Alerta al Conocimiento S.A. is a consortium of seven major Chilean universities. Established in 1993, the consortium provides researchers, university students, and other professionals in the country with access to journal collections located in the libraries of the associated universities. Alerta consolidates its members' subscriptions to international print and electronic journals, negotiates the subscription rates, manages the library network, and handles the cooperative use of the members' collections.
The services that the Alerta consortium offers include Web access to the metadata and full text of the articles available in the library network; document-delivery services; and the provision of articles not available in the members' collections.
Three consortium members, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Universidad de Concepción, and Universidad Católica del Nort--all of them ALEPH 500 users--are participating in the MetaLib/SFX project. In the first stage, currently underway, MetaLib is offering these three universities the resources for which the consortium has purchased a license and the ALEPH 500 OPAC catalogs. The project also covers the integration of the resources acquired separately by each member.
During the second stage, in 2005, the Alerta Virtual Periodicals database will also be integrated. This database contains information about all the printed journal collections of all the members of the consortium.
With the MetaLib and SFX, users of the three universities will be able to access the consortium's e-collections easily and obtain fast and appropriate services; in addition, they will be able to personalize their research environment to make their information searches more productive and effective.
About MetaLib
MetaLib, the Ex Libris library portal, offers users easy access to libraries' ecollections. With MetaLib, users can find resources relevant to their area of research and can search simultaneously across a range of diverse resources. MetaLib is fully integrated with SFX to allow onward navigation from records that MetaLib has retrieved. For librarians, MetaLib provides tools for managing today's hybrid information resources under one umbrella, be they local or remote, freely available or licensed.
For additional information on MetaLib, see www.exlibrisgroup.com/metalib.htm.
About SFX
SFX?the original OpenURL link server?is an innovative tool for navigation and discovery. It provides users with context-sensitive services that librarians define on the basis of their institution's e-collections and policies. Such services, which are dynamically created, can include links to the full text of an article, the OPAC (for local holdings), preferred document-delivery suppliers, Web-based resources, local information repositories, and more.
For additional information on SFX, see www.exlibrisgroup.com/sfx.htm.
About Ex Libris
Ex Libris is a leading worldwide developer and provider of high-performance applications for libraries, information centers, and researchers. The ALEPH integrated library solution from Ex Libris has been installed at over 1250 sites in 51 countries. MetaLib, the information portal for library collections, and SFX, the context-sensitive linking server for heterogeneous electronic resources in the scholarly information environment, have been adopted by more than 680 institutions in 34 countries. DigiTool, a solution for constructing digital collections, and the new Verde electronic resource management (ERM) system round out the Ex Libris product suite.
