The Sistema Bibliotecario Ticinese(SBT) today signed a contract with Ex Libris for the licensing and implementation of the ALEPH 500 library automation system in the eleven cantonal libraries of the Swiss canton Ticino. In the next phase, Ticino`s school and college libraries will also join the ALEPH network.

The SBT consortium, a former member of the VTLS-based RERO network, will coordinate tasks such as bibliographic data conversion with the Swiss Informationsverbund Deutschschweiz (IDS), the German-speaking library consortium. The IDS has been operating the ALEPH software successfully for well over a year at major universities and public libraries in the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland.

Except for a small number of French-speaking libraries already using ALEPH within the IDS network, SBT will be the first autonomous consortium in the non-German-speaking part of Switzerland to use ALEPH 500. Initially, the SBT will acquire licenses for 30 concurrent users, 64 Web-PAC users, and 10 Z39.50 concurrent-access users. The number of licenses is expected to increase as the system expands.

Implementation of the SBT project will begin immediately. Based on the current IDS version of ALEPH 500, the system is scheduled to be up and running by the spring of 2001. In addition to French, it will feature an Italian version of the ALEPH Web PAC. The next ALEPH 500 upgrade will include a full Italian version for SBT.

Professor Antonio Spadafora, SBT`s head of automation, commented that the selection of ALEPH represented "a decision based on a careful evaluation of alternatives, our reliance on the positive IDS experience, and our confidence in the abilities and seriousness of the multinational Ex Libris team."

Ex Libris is a leading worldwide developer of high-performance applications for libraries and information centers. ALEPH, the Ex Libris integrated library solution, has been installed at 540 sites in 42 countries. Ex Libris is a multinational company.