Following the announcement of the platform partnership between Talis and Medialab Solutions, Clare County Library, by sharing its library data with the Talis Platform, is able to showcase their library holdings within AquaBrowser Online - an online search capability that transcends the limits of OPAC searching.
The platform partnership allowed Medialab Solutions to take advantage of platform APIs to enable any library that contributes its holdings to the Talis Platform to see their catalogue via the AquaBrowser Online service. The essence of the Talis Platform encourages a global community of users and developers to liberate their data, build and deliver new and innovative library services alongside their existing library management systems.
Since March 2006, over 200 libraries in the UK and Ireland have shared their library data with the Talis Platform to raise the visibility of their holdings, reach beyond the boundaries of the library space, and begin pushing services out to people in the places where they are already interacting.
Joining Islington Library and Cultural Services, Clare County Library is amongst the first to reap the rewards of this new opportunity.
Anthony Edwards, Executive Librarian at Clare County comments "The very first time I saw AquaBrowser on the Queens Library, New York website, I knew I wanted it for Clare County Library. AquaBrowser represents a huge breakthrough in library catalogue appearance and performance. It helps the user broaden and deepen searches in intuitive and structured ways. As well as allowing you to find what you want, AquaBrowser Online enables that wonderful serendipity which happens when you walk down a library bookstack and find something exciting that you weren't even looking for. It's for the nosy, the enthusiastic, the broad minded, the inquisitive, the lazy and the layman"
Dave Errington, Talis CEO commented "It is encouraging to see many of our customers productively benefiting from this initiative. Clare County Library has been a Talis customer for over a decade using both Talis Alto and Talis Prism. This is an exciting time for Talis as our existing customers are beginning to reap the rewards of the Talis Platform."
Bastiaan Zwaan, CEO of Medialab Solutions stated, "We are thrilled that Clare County has chosen AquaBrowser as its search solution. Clare County is the perfect example of a progressive library trying something new and different to improve the service and usability for its users."
About Talis
Talis is an established provider of library and information management software to public and academic libraries and has a long history as a technology innovator, a pioneer for open standards, and as a partner for its customers.
Working closely with world standards bodies such as World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, and NISO, ongoing research activities include Web Services, Services Oriented Architectures, RDF based metadata and RSS.
Talis has recently announced a new Talis Library Platform which is an open, extensible, Web 2.0 based software platform which will be the foundation upon which next generation applications will be developed. The Talis Platform incorporates semantic content management, a global collections directory, with a Service Oriented Architecture that enables low cost institutional integration.
Through the Talis Developer Network, Talis welcomes developers to join its development community and build the next generation of applications and services on a shared platform.
For more information, visit www.talis.com where you can find detailed information, read our blogs, join our discussion forums, and listen to our industry podcasts.
About Medialab Solutions
Medialab Solutions in The Netherlands focuses its efforts toward creating successful searching solutions with invigorating passion to maintain all libraries as superior sources of information and knowledge. Striving to become the Number One library search solution in the world, AquaBrowser technology can be found in libraries around the world, including over 100 libraries in the USA and 80% of Dutch public libraries. The recently launched AquaBrowser Online promo-website can be viewed at www.aquabrowseronline.com. For contact or more information about the company, access http://www.medialab.nl.
About Clare County Library:
Clare County Library was the first public library in Ireland to offer its catalogue on the Web; the first to offer a local authority museum website; the first with an online Community Information service; the first with Online Publications; the first with online Literature Promotion; the first with an online catalogue of photographs; the first with online maps; and the first to create a Virtual Branch Library (in Cranny). Clare County Library sees its website at www.clarelibrary.ie as a fundamental part of its operations and structure, viewing the ‘library' as neither a building nor an institution but a resource to be used by people for information, learning, culture and the imagination thereby improving the intellectual and cultural quality of life of the community.
