epixtech and IJRA have signed a letter of understanding for the development and joint marketing of an interface between epixtech's Universal Resource Sharing Application (URSA) and URNs proprietary library automation software.
The agreement will achieve one of epixtech's goals, the sale of its products outside its regular customer base. URSA, an interlibrary loan product, is one of several products designed to work both with epixtech's own systems and those of other vendors. The agreement will dive DRA more time to complete Taos while meeting contractual obligations to customers to provide interlibrary loan support. That time is particularly critical in the case of more than 100 Ohio school libraries with DRA systems.
URSA has four major elements:
- Virtual catalog—a catalog that can be simultaneously searched across different vendors automated library systems using Z39.50.
- Patron authentication—a feature that accesses a patron's local library system to determine eligibility for service.
- ILL management—the automation of the request and loan processing, with tracking through the entire life cycle of the loan.
- Extended circulation—the ability to interact with automated library systems to place holds, create and delete temporary records at the borrowing library, and handle check-out and check-in at the lending library.
URSA was originally created by CPS Systems Inc., an Australian company. It is being used as the statewide resource sharing system in Maryland and as the first multlvendor Web-based “extended circulation system” at the North Bay (Calif) Cooperative Library System. eplxtech acquired URSA in 1999.
Work is underway to make URSA conform to the lnternatiànal interlibrary loan standards, ISO 10160-61. There also are plans to bring it into conformity with the Circulation Interface Protocol now being completed by the National Information Standards Organization.
[Contact: epixtech, inc., 400 W. 5050 North, Provo, UT 84604-5650; telephone: 801-223- 5200 or 800-223-5413; fax: 801-223-5202; Web: /www.eplxtech.com.]
