The Université du Québec (UQ) is pleased to announce that its implementation of Aleph 500 is complete and fully operational.  Comprised of eight UQ network campuses, the new consortium signed with Ex Libris in December of 2006 and opened its union catalogue to the world on September 4th, 2007 at the following url: http://catalogue.uquebec.ca

The UQ implementation team burned the midnight oil on many occasions as implementing Aleph within an eight-month period was quite a challenge particularly since UQ also merged approximately 1.7 million records to create a union catalogue of 1.4 million records.  Aided by Aleph's flexible and powerful OPAC, students, professors and researchers will be able to search throughout the collections of the eight institutions, either individually or all at once.

This constitutes the first French implementation of Aleph in North America and UQ would like to acknowledge the dedication and tenacity of the Ex Libris staff who were faced on a daily basis with unusual linguistic issues related to the data conversion and the system configuration.

The Université du Québec consortium comprises the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Université du Québec à Rimouski, Université du Québec en Outaouais, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscaminque, Institut national de la recherche scientifique, École nationale d'administration publique and École de technologie supérieure. (ref. : http://www.uquebec.ca)