This picturesque city in the Bosnian mountains is slowly but surely rising from its ruins and Ex Libris is proud to have made a valuable contribution to this reconstruction effort by furnishing its ALEPH 500 software to the Medical Library of the Mostar-West University.
The Mostar medical faculty, founded in 1997 with only 210 students enrolled to-date, is headed by Vice-Dean Prof. Vladimir Simunovic, before the war chief of the neuro-surgical university clinic in Sarajevo. Dr. Simunovic was quick to realize that a state-of-the-art informatics system was needed at his medical library to promote research and education and to renew links to the international medical community via the Internet. The ALEPH 500 system now fills this need.
The European Union has contributed financing to the two-year project through its Tempus educational program. Other sponsors, beside Ex Libris, are Sun Microsystems, the Heidelberg Medical Faculty, the Heidelberg University Computing Center, the Springer Editions and Lehman Books, both of Heidelberg. These firms and institutions have generously contributed equipment, software, textbooks, journals and human resources. The advisory board includes the Andalusian School of Public Health in Granada (Spain), the University of Florence (Italy) and the Help-the-Children Fund in Cork (Ireland).
The festive inauguration of the Mostar medical library took place on April 28, 2000. Students, staff, other medical schools in Bosnia-Herzogovina, as well as doctors, sanitary and social workers in the region, have access to the library resources, such as electronic mail, news-groups, lectures and the like. In a second project phase, these facilities are to be broadened to audio-visual teaching media, computer based training. A computer connected consortium of all medical libraries of the country, based on ALEPH 500, is also planned.
For more information, see the Mostar University School of Medicine Library Development and the Mostar School of Medicine Central Meidcal library.
The system marketed by Ex Libris, called ALEPH, is now in over 530 installations in 41 countries. Ex Libris is a multi-national company with offices located around the world.
