October 27, 2003 – Chicago – Ex Libris (USA) has announced that it has signed a contract with the Virginia Community College System for implementation of the ALEPH 500 library management system at the Commonwealth of Virginia's 23 community colleges. ALEPH will replace VCCS' mainframe NOTIS system. Approximately 1 million titles will be converted from the existing ILS as part of the VCCS migration to ALEPH.

"We are delighted to be acquiring a world-class integrated library system for Virginia's community colleges," said VCCS Chancellor Glenn DuBois. As an integral part of the VCCS' e-Learning initiative, the library information system is, he notes, "…a critical piece in our effort to serve all of our students, as well as provide an easily accessible resource for the increasing numbers of online students."

“With the addition of the 23 colleges of the Virginia Community College System, Ex Libris will solidify its rapidly growing presence in the Commonwealth of Virginia,” commented Russell McDonald, Vice President of Sales for Ex Libris (USA). “The Virginia Commonwealth University went live on their ALEPH system in the Summer, 2003, and the Library of Virginia—the Commonwealth's state library—went live on October 14, 2003. We are very pleased with VCCS' decision to go with Ex Libris and with ALEPH 500 and are looking forward to implementing VCCS' new ALEPH catalog.”

(Note: VCU's catalog may be found at aleph-web.library.vcu.edu:4505/FM. and the LVA catalog at ajax.lva.lib.va.us/F)

“The VCCS chose Ex Libris,” according to Director of Library Automation Gene Damon, “because of its strong support for cooperative environments like ours, where 23 community colleges share a single system. The VCCS wanted a system that would both protect the unique identities of the individual colleges and provide our students with a consistent user friendly interface to the rich resources we have in the system as a whole."

About the Virginia Community College System

The Virginia Community College System has 23 colleges, located on 40 campuses, throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia. During the academic year 2002-2003 VCCS enrolled 234,000 individuals whose course-load was the equivalent of almost 93,000 full-time students. In addition, the VCCS serves the needs of Virginia businesses through its Workforce Development Services. More than 127,000 employees of some 3,500 companies take advantage of VCCS' services to the business community each year.

About Ex Libris

Ex Libris is a leading worldwide developer of high-performance applications for libraries, information centers, and researchers. A multinational company, Ex Libris has offices around the world. ALEPH, the Ex Libris integrated library solution, has been installed at over 800 sites and consortia in over 50 countries. MetaLib, the information portal for library collections, and SFX, the context-sensitive linking solution for heterogeneous electronic resources in the scholarly information environment, have collectively been purchased by more than 450 sites in 26 countries. As a component of an overall digital strategy, DigiTool, a solution for constructing digital collections, rounds out the Ex Libris product suite.