Blacksburg, Virginia, USA—VTLS, Inc. and its agent, Altarama Systems are pleased to announce that the State Library of Queensland has purchased a comprehensive new information management solution to improve their service within the State Library, its network users in the country's libraries. The solution will be managed by Altarama Systems with the help of Southmark Solutions, a hardware and systems integration company. VTLS Inc. will provide its software system, Virtua.
The State Library will use Virtua, a library information management system, to automate its main bibliographic database and the bibliographic databases of several other government departments and public libraries. Virtua has been designed to meet the needs of large libraries such as the State Library that have sophisticated functional requirements. In the Queensland State Library solution Virtua will handle a combination of database requirements and parameters from the State, Special and Public libraries that share the State Library of Queensland system.
Another reason for selecting Virtua is its ability to store, access and display digital information resources in a distributed environment. This enables the State Library to decentralise its electronic resources and its cultural heritage collections as both become available in digital format.
The Virtua modules will be installed in a phased implementation. The first phase began May 1998 and the State Library plans to go live the first quarter of 1999. The first subsystems to be installed are Cataloging and Authority Control, OPAC, Virtua-Web Gateway, Reporting, Circulation and Closed Stack Requesting. The second phase will begin as soon as the Serials and Acquisitions system are complete. The State Library's system will support 256 users, over 800,000 loans and 100,000 stack retrievals per annum. Its database contains approximately 1.2 million titles and 1.6 million items.
"The contract for the new information system was awarded to Southmark Solutions and its subcontractors, Altarama Systems and VTLS Inc., after twelve months of researching information solutions around the world," said Des Stephens, State Librarian. "The State Library decided this three-vendor solution provided the best available product and the technical framework required to meet our information access, resource sharing and service goals throughout Queensland," he said.
All software provided by VTLS Inc. and Altarama is client-server based, Z39.50 compliant, and has been specifically written to take advantage of the power of 32 bit desktops and the Windows 95/NT desktop operating system. The servers will be a Sun Enterprise 4000 UNIX server and an IBM NT server.
Other products to be provided include Altarama's Aurora Web OPAC for Z39.50 databases. This software enables multiple Z39.50 databases to be accessed from the Internet by anyone with a web browser, including patrons using dumb terminals with Lynx browsers. Fulcrum's Knowledge Network based system for retrieval of information from non-bibliographic databases is also being integrated with the Virtua solution.
Shirley Forster, managing director of Altarama Systems said, "Altarama and VTLS Inc., are very excited about providing this well-planned, technically advanced, comprehensive information management solution to the State Library of Queensland."
"Both Altarama and VTLS strictly adhere to international standards making it easy for us to jointly produce a high technology solution," stated Vinod Chachra, president of VTLS Inc. "This solution improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the library's services within the library and to the world.