Ex Libris (USA) Inc. announced today that the 21 campuses of The City University of New York (CUNY) have selected ALEPH 500 as their next generation library system, replacing their current NOTIS system.

The City University of New York (CUNY), situated in one of the world's pre-eminent cities, is the largest urban university in the United States and is the third-largest public university system. Some 200,000 students are enrolled for degrees on 21 campuses in all five boroughs of New York City. Another 150,000 students take adult and continuing education courses. CUNY believes in open access to educational opportunities and resources and their selection of ALEPH 500 is designed to support that policy.

The Office of Library Services supports the University's 19 campus libraries under the Director of Library Services, Marsha Ra. "The CUNY Council of Chief Librarians unanimously endorsed the recommendation to license Aleph 500 which will replace our exising NOTIS system," said Ms. Ra. "CUNY has successfully operated its libraries as a cooperative consortium for the past 12 years. We have been ready to move to an open architecture, client server solution for some time. We were looking for a system that offered us full functionality as well as powerful support for our complex consortial environment. ALEPH 500 meets these requirements with far more flexibility and more powerful searching tools than we enjoyed with our legacy system. The architectural considerations were a key part of our process. We knew that the new system would serve as a cornerstone for our future plans."

Ms. Ra also referred to SUNY's recent decision to license ALEPH 500 as a factor in the CUNY decision. "We are very excited about this opportunity to work with our SUNY colleagues as both institutions implement ALEPH. Together we will be providing an impressive array of new tools and services to our students and faculty. We hope to leverage this decision to maximize New York State tax dollars. The result will be a dramatic expansion of information resources available to our respective communities, spanning the entire State of New York." Carl Grant, President of Ex Libris (USA) inc., said "CUNY's selection of ALEPH continues the surge of large, outstanding academic institutions moving towards a product and company that are extremely attentive and responsive to their unique needs, ALEPH 500 and Ex Libris USA".

Installation and implementation of the new ALEPH 500 system will occur over the next several years and will ultimately support a database of 5 million titles. The system marketed by Ex Libris, called ALEPH, is now in over 500 installations with more than 17,000 concurrent users in 41 countries. Ex Libris is a multi-national company with offices located around the world.