Blacksburg, VA – Two more libraries in Europe have made the decision to implement Virtua ILS – Integrated Library Systems. The Caixa Laietana Bank and Diputacio de Barcelona, both in Spain, are scheduled to go live with Virtua by the end of this year.

The Caixa Laietana Bank houses a public library that is financed by the bank's private funds and has locations in the cities of Mataro and Argentona, Spain. Previously, Caixa Laietana Bank's library used a modified version of MicroVTLS, a PC based product. The library will join Virtua with an 8-user license and will implement Virtua's OPAC, Cataloging and Authority Control, System Client, Language Editor, Statistics and Reporting, Circulation, Serials Control and Chameleon Web Gateway subsystems. The Bank's libraries have over 80,000 titles, 1,000 of which are serials. In total the libraries have over 120,000 item records and serve 15,000 patrons. Caixa Laietana is currently in the process of migrating to Virtua. They are scheduled to go live by the end of December 2001.

Joining VTLS in 1989, Diputacio de Barcelona is the oldest Classic VTLS customer in Spain. Diputacio has a main database that includes records from a consortium of public libraries with more than 100 locations around the city of Barcelona. In addition to the main database at Diputació de Barcelona, three other separate databases are using VTLS. One of these databases, Fons d'Història Local or Local History of Catalunya, has already started migration to Virtua.

Fons d'Història Local represents a retrospective book collection comprised of bibliographic information that was formerly located in several different libraries. Currently, more than 80,000 bibliographic records about Catalan history and information in this database will be migrated to Virtua and will be available to people worldwide via Virtua's Chameleon Gateway.

For the purposes of the main database at Diputació de Barcelona, the consortium has decided to use Virtua's Acquisitions subsystem that now offers libraries the ability to manage centralized acquisition and distribution of items. This new functionality in Virtua's Acquisitions subsystem is called Distribution Groups. This feature allows the central acquisitions department to create different distribution groups. Once created, orders may be placed for one or more distribution group. The librarian may also select specific libraries to be excluded from group orders if so desired. When using Distribution Groups, the librarian may identify the library locations that have ordered copies, determine how many copies have been ordered by each location and then distribute the copies. Distribution Groups have been developed by VTLS and will be implemented in Diputacio de Barcelona by the end of the year 2001.