Blacksburg, VA - VTLS is proud to announce a significant achievement in its implementation of the Functional Requirements of Bibliographic Records (FRBR) model in online catalogs. The FRBR catalog was first introduced by VTLS in January 2003 in Release 42. VTLS Release 43 added features dealing with the ease of use in the day-to-day work-flow in cataloging and circulation activities.
Enhancements were also made in the critical area of "peaceful co-existence" of a FRBR catalog in a largely unFRBRized world. Libraries have to deal with external agencies like Union Catalogs, Book Vendors and serials suppliers. These external agencies require records but may or may not be familiar with FRBR model of cataloging. Thus, from an operational point of view, functional capabilities had to be provided to FRBRize records (one by one or in large batches) for internal use and to dynamically "UnFRBRize" them to send to external agencies that are not in a position to deal with FRBRized records.
In January 2003 The Universite catholique de Louvain (UCL) in Belgium continuing its tradition as a Virtua pioneer became the first university library in the world to commit to a production FRBR catalog. Since that time, Vaughn Public Library in Canada has committed to become the first public library to embrace FRBR.
"FRBR certainly is an exciting development and the implementation in Virtua is more than convincing," said Charles-Henri Nyns, Chief Librarian of UCL. "The FRBR training provided by VTLS was extremely useful. It is now our intention to go live with FRBR very soon."
In January 2004, convinced that the FRBR implementation was both robust and practical, Mr. Nyns agreed to open the FRBR catalog to the public. The implementation of Release 43 of Virtua at UCL is imminent and will be available to the public in the next weeks. Using OAI as an underlying methodology, UCL participates in a national union catalog project for Belgium called UNICAT. This participation requires UCL to submit all their records in the traditional MARC format.
"We had requested that VTLS produce a un-FRBRize module so that we can continue to participate in the UNICAT project," said Mrs. Antoinette LeMaire, systems librarian at UCL. "This new release now makes it possible. Our special thanks to Mr. Randall Barry at the Library of Congress for providing special training on Marc 21 and FRBR. Combined with the training and many practical examples provided by VTLS our staff is now confident in its use of the FRBR model."
UCL will be maintaining a "mixed" catalog including some FRBR records and others in the traditional format. Both record types will exist in the same database and may be accessed with a single search. The Virtua FRBR software will automatically detect the type of record (FRBR or non-FRBR) in order to display it accordingly.
"We are happy to be able to bring to reality (in the form of a working system) the intellectual work done by the Library of Congress, OCLC, BNF and others in developing the FRBR model," said Dr. Vinod Chachra, CEO of VTLS Inc. "I believe that the FRBR OPAC will, over time, completely replace the traditional OPAC as it is more user friendly and brings all related materials together in a unified display. Users will expect the capability to place holds at the work, expression or manifestation levels - a feature that only FRBR based systems can deliver. We see FRBR in the future of every library."
About VTLS Inc.
VTLS Inc. (www.vtls.com) is a leading global company that creates and provides visionary technology in library solutions. We have three distinctive divisions that provide these solutions to a diverse customer base of more than 900 libraries in over 32 countries. Our VIRTUA division remains focused on ILS solutions, our VTRAX division focuses on RFID type technologies through our partnership with Tagsys and our Digital Asset Creation & Management division provides cutting edge software and services for Digital Libraries. VTLS is also one of the few ISO 9001 quality certified companies within the library industry.