New Orleans -- NOTIS Systems, Inc. today announced that Carnegie Mellon University will be the Alpha test site for NOTIS' new client/server information management system, NOTIS Horizon. Testing will begin in July of this year.
As part of the relationship, Carnegie Mellon and NOTIS Systems have signed a Technology Transfer Agreement. This allows NOTIS to take advantage of technologies developed during Carnegie Mellon's Mercury Electronic Library Project. The Mercury Project began at Carnegie Mellon in 1989. From the outset the goal of the Mercury project has been to develop a practical system, using modern distributed computing, to deliver information electronically.
The technologies and consulting from the Mercury project that CMU will share with NOTIS are in the areas of image transfer and display, database building software, network authentication and database authorization, multiple server operations, and scanning technologies.
According to Dr. Charles Lowry, University Librarian at Carnegie Mellons' Hunt Library, "We chose to work with NOTIS because we share a similar vision of computing for the near future. It includes an understanding that we are working in a highly distributed, networked environment characterized by the use of a variety of server platforms and workstation clients."
Transferring technologies that were developed during the Mercury Project is extremely valuable to both Carnegie Mellon and NOTIS.
"We wanted to be able to share technologies that we developed to make them generally available as a supported product from a highly reliable vendor. Through this partnership, we can take advantage of what we have done here to better serve our campus and community," said Lowry.
"The work at Carnegie Mellon in information delivery, particularly image transfer and database building is extremely valuable. Our Technology Transfer agreement allows us to generalize those developments for all NOTIS customers," said Jane Burke, President of NOTIS.
Carnegie Mellon University is located in Pittsburgh, PA. The university libraries hold a collection of over 805,000 print volumes, 500,000 titles, and 700,000 microforms. The university has over 7,500 students and 800 faculty.
NOTIS Systems, Inc., Evanston, IL is a leading provider of information systems for libraries. NOTIS is a subsidiary of Ameritech Information Systems.
