Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A.- The Universidad Católica de Avila Library, (UCA) has selected VTLS97 as its automation solution with the intention of upgrading to Virtua, VTLS' 3rd generation system, upon its completion. The UCA is a new university offering degrees including philosophy, history, literature, law, political and social sciences, computer science and theology. Ms. Veerle Minner, Director of the library stated, "The Universdidad Católica de Avila decided to purchase VTLS after carefully comparing it with other products that were at first sight equally attractive, and after being convinced of its superior performance in an academic setting."
The UCA library project includes the implementation of an automation system for the new library which is currently being constructed. When completed the library will house a state-of-the-art computer system for allowing UCA students and faculty to access books and bibliographic sources from around the world. The library will provide document delivery services, an introduction to the software research systems available for researchers and general reference services. UCA is a four-year university offering many degree programs including Philosophy, History, Literature, Law, Political and Social Sciences, Computer Science and Theology.
"Our goal is to deliver the VTLS solution to all libraries in Spain, but especially to those libraries wishing to implement a global vision," said Charles Lynch, Country Manager of VTLS Europe, S.L. "We are very pleased to welcome the forward-thinking Universidad Catolica de Avila, our 23rd customer in Spain, to the community of University libraries using VTLS."
The City of Avila is known for its artistic richness and some of UCA's library faculty will be working behind one of Avila's most magnificent architectural splendors, its gothic cathedral. The cathedral was built between the 12th and 13th century. The walls of the cathedral are perfectly preserved. Nine, very large ornate doors are used to access this historic site. The library faculty working in this historic building are currently building their on-line catalog by outsourcing cataloging and by purchasing shelf-ready books from various book vendors which provide MARC bibliographic records with the title.
VTLS experts completed the entire installation at UCA within 30 days of signing the contract. The library is using the USMARC format and running the VTLS97 system on the Sun Ultra 1 platform with the Oracle RDBMS. In addition to the VTLS97 base system consisting of OPAC, cataloging, authority control, reporting and statistics, the library also purchased VTLS97 acquisitions, serials and circulation software. The VTLS-Web Gateway was also purchased and will be a key to fulfilling their objective of providing access to the Universities catalog via the World Wide Web.