DES PLAINES, ILLINOIS, Nov. 20, 2000: Endeavor Information Systems announced today the Lane Medical Library and the Jackson Business Library, two coordinate libraries at Stanford University, have selected the Voyager integrated library management system.
"We looked at several different systems, but we think that Endeavor can best meet our library system requirements while also helping to support other strategic initiatives within our respective professional schools," explained Shirley Hallblade, Director of the Jackson Business Library. "We like Endeavor's focus on the needs of academic and research libraries, and are challenged by the opportunities we see for shared development of new solutions to library issues. As a joint Lane-Jackson purchase, Voyager's functionality could best accommodate bringing our two separate libraries together like this--mostly right out of the box."
"Many of the requirements in our RFP were beyond a typical integrated library system. Endeavor saw solutions to our problems with existing software, reducing the amount of customization needed with the implementation," explained Dick Miller, Head of Technical Services and Systems Librarian at the Lane Medical Library.
"We work in a complex environment and need to restrict digital access by various user groups," Miller explained, citing that Lane Medical Library has over 800 electronic journals linked into the catalog. "We wanted to standardize on a Unix platform and the Oracle database manager. Having this industry-standard infrastructure and an open system architecture is very important for efficient management and provides sufficient flexibility to support related local initiatives," Miller commented. "Endeavor's APIs and SQL make us comfortable that we can access our data much more efficiently than at present."
Voyager Offers Simplified Workflows for Staff
The Lane Medical Library is a trailblazer in integrating a considerable amount of content into bibliographic and authority files, having over 50,000 chapter/article records, extensive form/genre headings, and over 4,000 URLs in authority data. Lane's authority records include faculty research interests, as well as historical and biographical data. Miller also listed integration with university accounting systems and established EDI capabilities with desired vendors as advantages of the Voyager system.
"We were looking for a system that introduced new efficiencies and avoided duplication of work steps," Hallblade said. "Technical Services staff pointed to Voyager features such as receiving and paying multi-line invoices in the same operation, existing EDI interfaces with our established vendors, and efficiency in the cataloging screen design as examples of how Voyager could contribute to improved workflows and savings in staff time."
Voyager Integrates User Resources
Users at the libraries will also benefit from Voyager's intuitive searching. "With Voyager, users can search multiple databases and retrieve integrated results, instead of looking in two or three different places," Miller said. "All of our local databases will be integrated in a single retrieval, with one results list showing the origin of all hits."
"The simultaneous searching of multiple databases is a very powerful feature of the Voyager platform," Hallblade said. "Additional capabilities such as deduping and the ability to save searches enhance the interface, and contribute to a very robust search mechanism."
Voyager Matches Libraries' Needs
"Voyager will be a very good fit at the Lane Medical and Jackson Business Libraries, sites that have high scholarly demands and creative ideas for working with Voyager," commented Jane Burke, Endeavor's President and CEO. "As Endeavor integrates the ideas of our existing customers to the Voyager system, we find other libraries interested in the same processes and workflow ideas. We are very pleased that these libraries can take full advantage of the benefits and features we've built into the Voyager system based on our customer input."
About the Lane Medical and Jackson Business Libraries
Lane Medical Library and Jackson Business Library are independent, "coordinate" libraries at Stanford University. While serving the entire campus and offering special services for their primary clientele, both libraries are engaged in collaborative projects and experimental initiatives in support of their respective graduate professional schools. Lane and Jackson Libraries have shared library automation efforts since 1992. Lane Medical Library will manage the Voyager installation in support of both libraries.
Lane serves the students, faculty and staff of Stanford School of Medicine, Stanford Hospital and Clinics, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, and Stanford University. Lane Library has undertaken projects such as XMLMARC, a current experiment to restructure bibliographic and related data for interfacing with other information resources and systems, streaming video production, and providing PDAs for all pre-clinical students. Lane supports the Stanford Medical Center in research, education and patient-care programs. Visit http://www-med.stanford.edu/lane for more information on the Lane Medical Library.
The J. Hugh Jackson Business Library serves the students, faculty and staff of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Stanford University community. Jackson Library, with over 450,000 volumes and over 1600 journal subscriptions, is recognized as one of the premier academic business libraries in the world. The Rosenberg Corporate Research Center, occupying most of the main floor, forms the heart of the library's current business information resources with a distributed network of workstations providing access to a broad range of business and financial databases. Visit http://www-gsb.stanford.edu/library for more information on the Jackson Business Library.
About Endeavor
Endeavor Information Systems, based in Des Plaines, IL, was founded in September of 1994. Over 775 academic and research libraries of every size have chosen Endeavor's high performance library system. Endeavor offers a complete line of library solutions for traditional and digital collections. Visit Endeavor at http://www.endinfosys.com for more information.