POMONA, Calif., July 5, 1996 -- William Kliss has been promoted to the newly-created position of chief operating officer at Auto-Graphics Inc. (OTC:AUGR) in a move that maximizes the synergy between the company's electronic publishing and library services operations. In his new position, he is responsible for all operations, including product development, sales and marketing.
"The change will help us maximize revenues, streamline product development and marketing efforts, and improve our ability to capitalize on market opportunities," Robert Cope said. "The changes conform to the reality of converging markets," he added in reference to the impact of technology on the creation, distribution and consumption of information in the U.S. and abroad.
The emerging synergy of products and markets is a natural evolution of more than 40 years of previously segmented services to publishers and libraries, according to Kliss. "The World Wide Web is drawing the two segments together," he said.
A leading innovator in enabling libraries to capitalize on Web resources for both staff operations and patron services, Auto-Graphics' Impact/ONLINE product family is rapidly becoming the defacto industry interface for in-library workstations, and remote access to seamless integration of composite catalogs shared by library consortia, inter-library lending, access to commercial and government databases, and all library resources (including CD-ROM) by patrons via the Internet.
"Library adoption of online technology has not gone unnoticed by publishers of databases and other information resources," Kliss said. "Our long history of service to publishers -- dating from 1950 and evolving through computer typesetting, microfiche and CD-ROM technology -- has already established Auto-Graphics as a valued business partner to an industry that now envisions electronic network distribution."
Among its many capabilities that serve publishers is the company's standing as one of the world's leading authorities on implementing SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), an international standard (ISO 8879) that enables electronic document exchange between all compliant computer systems.
Now a requirement by most government and corporate information publishers, SGML is becoming increasingly important to libraries, Kliss noted. "Library information exchange is based on a different standard (MARC), but librarians are looking to achieve interoperability with SGML databases to expand the online information available to patrons," he said.
The company continues to provide database publishing, electronic composition, CD-ROM services and SGML solutions, with most new product developments and revenue growth over the past two years emphasizing the advantages of the Internet and World Wide Web.
"We are now in a unique position to help publishers provide content over the Web to library networks, while continuing to expand our base of library subscribers to Web services," Robert Cope said. "We are right in the middle of two dynamic growth markets, with a set of gateway tools to facilitate their interoperability."
Company Information
Founded in 1950, Auto-Graphics, Inc. (OTC:AUGR) has capitalized on new technology as it becomes available, providing information publishing and database resource sharing systems to the publishing and library communities.
