HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (June 26, 1999) - Sirsi Corporation's popular WebCat Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) is now available in Arabic, Chinese and Spanish, the company announced today. The new multi-language WebCat versions will be available for hands-on demonstration at the American Library Association Annual Conference, June 26-29, 1999, in New Orleans.

According to Lamar Jackson, SIRSI's director of International Business Development, the foreign language WebCat versions are the result of close collaboration between SIRSI and its partners in Saudi Arabia, China and Mexico. "In addition to supplying translations, our partners helped us build indexes, construct searches and display results in each language. These collaborations ensure foreign language speakers will find WebCat as useful and easy to navigate in their native language as it is in English," he commented.

In addition to serving as the main online catalog for foreign sites, the multi-language WebCats will be useful to U.S. libraries with a diverse user base, reported Greg Hathorn, SIRSI's vice president of Library Products. "The list of available languages appears near the top of every WebCat page. When a user selects his or her native language, WebCat will automatically refresh the window, including all labels and images, into that language. Instead of having one workstation that is dedicated to a foreign language online catalog, every workstation in the library will be open to all users, regardless of language preference," he said.

SIRSI, the leader in library technology, is a privately held company founded in 1979, with headquarters in Huntsville, Ala. SIRSI uses the most advanced technology available to provide easy-to-use information systems for libraries, businesses and archives. With offices in major U.S. cities and subsidiaries in Australia, Canada, Latin America, the Peoples Republic of China and the United Kingdom, the company has established its Unicorn products as the leading client-server library information systems in the world.