Blacksburg, VA - This month, the Swiss National Library (SNL) went live with the Virtua production database, Helveticat. The database, which took a little over a week to install and convert, houses 3.5 million records and grows by about 55,000 titles each year. Helveticat migrated to Release 41, the latest version of Virtua ILS - Integrated Library Systems software and Chameleon iPortal.
"From the beginning, the task of the Swiss National Library has been to collect Helvetica and preserve this material for posterity and make it available to the public," said Dr. Jean Frederic Jauslin, director of the Swiss National Library.
The term Helvetica denotes the entire literary production of the country, including handwritten manuscripts, printed and digitized material and sound documents. It also includes all works, original and translated, published by Swiss authors depicting Switzerland, its population and its history. All publications of associations and official bodies, musical scores, daily newspapers, dissertations, and even telephone and address directories fall under the umbrella of Helvetica. For fast access to information about the collections, the library maintains several digitized catalogs, principally the online catalog Helveticat, which just went live with Virtua. SNL, located in Bern, Switzerland, implemented Virtua in four different languages, English, German and French all spoken in the country.
"With Virtua's full Unicode compliancy, it is easy for any Swiss citizen to access our catalog in their own language," said Dr. Jauslin.
The migration of Helveticat to Virtua is a milestone in the automation of French-speaking libraries in Switzerland. With the completion of Helveticat, every public and academic library in the francophone areas of Switzerland will be running under Virtua. This represents 11 computer systems, supporting more than 120 libraries. The two largest systems, Helveticat and the Rero Union Catalog, each holds more than 3.5 million records. Helveticat may be accessed at: www.helveticat.ch.
In addition to Helveticat, the Swiss National Library provides access via Virtua's Digital Library option to the National Poster Collection. This collection may be accessed at: "http://www.snl.ch/posters.
"Next year marks the 10th anniversary of the partnership between VTLS and SNL," said Dr. Chachra, president of VTLS Inc. "It is appropriate that SNL and VTLS continue to work together to provide the very best systems and services to SNL users. Our partnership has had a long history of success with achievements that include the de-acidification project, the posters project and now, Helveticat."
About VTLS Inc.
VTLS Inc. (www.vtls.com) is an ISO 9001 registered company. With over 25 years of experience creating smarter libraries, museums, archives and corporations, VTLS Inc. is an international leader in integrated library automation, digital imaging services and RFID technology. VTLS Inc. solutions include Virtua ILS - Integrated Library Systems, Visual MIS - Multimedia and Imaging Solutions and Vista CPS - Companion Product Suite. VTLS is a corporate member of the American Library Association, a voting member of NISO, and a charter member and sponsor of CNI. A diverse customer base of more than 900 libraries located in 32 countries gives VTLS a global perspective of the industry and compels the company to abide by strict international standards.