The Councils Online Consortium in NSW Australia has commenced live operation of the Amlib Library Management System from InfoVision. The Consortium has implemented the latest version of Amlib (version 4.2), which enables libraries to extensively customize the appearance of all Amlib Web Opac screens separately for each library service within the consortium.
"The implementation of Amlib for the Consortium has been one of our largest projects in 2004" says Trevor Dykstra, Manager Operations at InfoVision. "With 30 branches, 1.25 million items and data migration from four legacy library systems it is exciting to see Amlib in live operation as part of a centrally managed solution to libraries ".
The Councils Online Consortium is a syndicate of five NSW Councils comprising Hornsby, Lake Macquarie, Parramatta, Randwick, and Wyong, having a combined population of 750,000.
The information technology (IT) solution is called "Councils Online". This covers not only Library Management Software, but also a wide range of Council applications including Financial Systems, Land Information Systems and HR, and will bring significant benefits to local residents and businesses by improving customer services and providing better access to information.
Under the agreement, Cap Gemini leads the consortium of technology, product and service providers to build and operate the centrally managed solution over a ten-year period, with InfoVision providing the Amlib Library Management System as part of the solution. A centralised and standardised hosted IT infrastructure is constructed around Oracle e-Business Suite to manage all administrative and operational issues at the councils. The environment is hosted on Hewlett Packard infrastructure from a data centre at Homebush in Sydney.
Contact information for InfoVision and the Amlib Library Management System can be found at http://www.amlib.net
