Bristol (U.K.), October 26, 1998

The University of Bristol today signed a contract with Ex Libris (UK) Ltd. for the installation of ALEPH 500 at its libraries. ALEPH will replace the LIBERTAS system previously in use. Coming on the heels of similar awards by King's College London and Westminster University, this is the third major award to the company by a renowned and prestigious British university.

When switching to on-line production in early July 1999, the ALEPH site at Bristol will involve close to 200 licensed concurrent users. The ALEPH software will run on a Sun E3500 server (http://www.sun.com), supplied and maintained by Relay Business Systems Ltd. (http://www.relay.co.uk).

University College Bristol was founded in 1876 and gained its Royal Charter as the University of Bristol in 1909. The total student population currently stands at about 11700 organized in six faculties: Arts, Law, Social Sciences, Science, Engineering and Medicine. In the last Research Assessment Exercise in 1996, 84% of Bristol's departments were rated in the two highest grades. In support of the University's teaching and research, the Library provides a large collection of traditional printed material and a growing range of electronic resources through fourteen branches. It has been active in library automation since the 1960s.

Commenting on Bristol University's choice of ALEPH, Peter King, the University's Deputy Librarian, declared, on the occasion of the contract signature: "In the course of our evaluation process, we were naturally attentive to reports received from King's College and Westminster University, both former LIBERTAS users, concerning ALEPH at their libraries. At King's College, ALEPH has been in production for the last two months and has so far fulfilled the users' expectations. At Westminster University, the implementation of ALEPH is proceeding apace. The pioneering role of these two institutions as 'founding members' of the growing ALEPH family in the U.K. meant encouragement and motivation for Bristol University to follow in their footsteps. We therefore harbour great hopes concerning the benefits which ALEPH, a new generation automation software with forward looking system architecture and very generous range of functionalities, will bring to our students, researchers and faculty staff. We are particularly excited about the opportunities it will provide for greater integration between the Library and other systems within the University."