Huntsville, AL (February 25, 1997) - Sirsi Corporation announces the license of its popular UNICORN library system to the Malaspina University-College Library in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. The College, a member of the British Columbia confederacy, is acting upon a recent government mandate to develop a technological infrastructure facilitating resource sharing between colleges and university colleges in B.C.

The library collection consists of 120,000 volumes, 1,200 subscriptions, and close to 500 full text journals on-line. "We were confident that the [UNICORN] client/server architecture and Z39.50 protocols would provide a solid foundation for offering appropriate library services to our users in the 21st Century," states Catherine Whiteley, Library Director. The library will be using the award-winning WebCat, InfoVIEW, and the Reference Database Manager, InfoBASE "Fast Start," to assist in processing and distributing information throughout its community of users. The library is migrating from a BUCAT system and will install UNICORN on an IBM RISC System/6000 host computer.

Malaspina University-College is named after a Spanish sea captain. Commissioned in 1791 by the King of Spain to search for a Northwest Passage, the captain spent time on Vancouver Island, not far from the college's current location. Malaspina opened in 1969 as a regional community college offering university transfer and career programs. In 1989 it was designated a University-College and began offering selected university degree programs. The college presently serves 5,000 full-time students on its main campus in Nanaimo and supports three regional campuses in Powell River, Parksville, and Ducan B.C.

Company Background

SIRSI, founded in 1980, is a privately held company with headquarters in Huntsville, Alabama. SIRSI uses the most advanced technology available to develop, market, and support easy-to-use information software systems for libraries, businesses, and archives. Its products include WebCat™ and VIZION™, Web information managers; Hyperion Digital Media Archive; and InfoBASE for data warehousing. With offices in major U.S. cities, and subsidiaries in Canada, the U.K., and Australia, the company has established its Unicorn products as the leading UNIX-based, client/server library automation system in the world. For more information, please contact SIRSI via phone at (205) 922-9820, fax at (205) 922-9818, or the World Wide Web at http://www.sirsi.com.