INWOOD, WV, August 24, 2001 TLC/CARL -- a global leader in library automation and personalized web portal services -- today announced that two large public school districts have selected the company's premier library automation systems.

In a recent purchase, Klein Independent School District - located in the northwest Houston area and serving a suburban school population of approximately 35,000 students and faculty - purchased CARL IMDS, recently renamed CARL•Solution. The selection was made as an upgrade to a library automation bid award to CARL in 1995. Preceding the purchase, Klein upgraded its library automation system Tandem K series server to an S series server to enhance library automation system resources and to increase the number of system processes available to users.

Currently the Klein Independent School District has library holdings in excess of 390,000 books and provides 300 library automation workstations serving approximately 32,000 students and 4,000 faculty and staff at 30 campuses. The new CARL system software and Tandem server allows Klein to increase public access catalog (PAC) access at existing campuses and also provides for future growth as new schools are added. Planning, implementation, and staff training for CARL•Solution implementation are scheduled over the next six months.

Noted Barbara Camp, Associate Director for Student Services for Klein Independent School District, “CARL.Solution provides Klein the opportunity to add CARLWeb, Kid's Catalog Web, and YouSeeMore to its existing PAC union catalog. The catalog currently features the Everybody's Catalog and Kid's Catalog graphical modules-- intuitive and powerful campus-based resources for teaching information literacy and providing information access. CARL.Solution also offers library staff graphical modules for such functions as Circulation, Cataloging, Reports, and Inter-library Loan.”

In addition, Ms. Camp noted that future implementation of the CARL.Solution web modules will provide Klein patrons web-based access to district library resources.

Chesterfield County Public Schools finds the Solution

Also making news recently, Chesterfield County Public Schools -- a K-12 school system situated near Richmond with 400,000 titles, serving 51,000 studentscontracted with TLC to purchase Library•Solution. The selection was made following a six-month RFP and evaluation process. Also included in the purchase are YouSeeMore with full content options, Kid's Catalog Web, Serials and Acquisitions management, as well as all hardware and staff training for its 57 sites and 155 technical workstations. The school system's 721 PAC stations will provide access to Library.Solution. Estimated Wide Area Network (WAN) access to the automation system is 15,000.

Commenting on today's announcement, TLC/CARL President and CEO, Annette Bakhtiar, stated, “Today's forward-thinking K-12 library systems increasingly need to provide their patrons and staffs with access to the same level of speed and resources found in much larger organizations. No one understands this better than TLC/CARL, where every day we work closely with libraries nationwide to deliver an unparalleled combination of power, customization and service.”