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Northumberland County select Geac PLUS
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Bristol England (March 2000) Northumberland County Library, in awarding the first major
English Public Library contract of the new millennium, have selected Geac as their Library System supplier.
After a very focussed and intensive period of evaluation, Northumberland County Library have
decided that Geac’s PLUS system is the one which best meets their needs. PLUS, the standards based server system, together with Geac’s full range of standards-based client
products, will be installed in all of the County’s Libraries in a rapid implementation. A key milestone is the opening of the new library in Berwick-upon-Tweed in June 2000 – which will be
fully operational on the new system.
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Ian Manson Library Sales
Geac Library Division
1690 Park Avenue
Almondsbury
Bristol BS32 4RA
Tel:- +44(0)1454 617020
Fax:-+44(0)1454 888503
i.manson@geac.com
www.geac.com |
Included in the system will be Circulation, Cataloguing, Acquisitions, Serials, and GeoWeb, the browser based OPAC/Web access
retrieval system. The client applications to support these functions are also to be implemented. Additionally Northumberland will be implementing WinBus, the off-line mobile solution which offers local
database and borrower access, and Impromptu, the graphical MIS tool from Cognos Corporation. Fully integrated ILL functionality will be provided by VDX from Fretwell-Downing.
A key factor in the decision was Geac’s approach to the implementation. ‘Geac showed that they understood the implementation issues facing us as we
automate for the first time,’ commented Mike Dimelow, Principal Libraries Officer. ‘And they showed that they had the project management and implementation skills necessary to handle this
complex project in our timescales.’
County Council Spokesperson for Community services added “The public library is a key service
the County Council delivers to the people of Northumberland and I am very pleased that we are able to develop our already excellent service further with the new system.”
"We are delighted that Northumberland County Library chose Geac in the first major
implementation of the new millennium, " said Jon Brooks, General Manager for Geac's Library Division. "Geac is noted for the high quality of our implementation services. We work hard to see
that systems are delivered on time and fully operational. And our user friendly client/server technology and Web-based public access catalogue will provide a fully integrated solution to
allow users all across the County to access the library's collections and a wide variety of other information resources."
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Tasmania State libraries choose Geac’s PLUS
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State of Tasmania grows library services with Geac Geac is delighted to announce that the State
of Tasmania has chosen Geac Library Management Solutions for a major client / server upgrade to its statewide library and information management system.
The Tasmanian Automated Library and Information System (TALIS) covers all of Tasmania's
public and reference libraries, all the TAFE libraries and approximately 120 schools and colleges. Tasmania is unique in pulling different types of library users together on a single system.
"One of the big benefits is that the public only has to learn one system for all libraries from primary school through college, into adulthood," said Belinda Flowers, Manager, Information Systems
Support. "That makes it easy for them to use libraries, which is a boon for information literacy."
The upgrade follows a new government mandate to greatly improve IT teaching resources in
schools, as well as IT literacy in Tasmania in general. "We chose Geac because of the complexity of our requirements," Ms Flowers explained. "To allow the public to access all libraries
using a single card means that all libraries have to be on an integrated system. But we also wanted to give individual libraries the flexibility to run as they choose, with no restrictions. This
means we needed to handle well over 5,000 parameters." "The extent and flexibility of Geac's parameters allows us to deal with a complex arrangement of over 180 libraries, all requiring
different service delivery rules and different views of the data," Ms Flowers continued. "Geac's advanced Web functionality gives more flexible access for the public and allows us to reduce
costs by centrally maintaining and supporting the software on thousands of client PCs."
TALIS will now provide graphical user access to over 4 million information resources - including
digitised photo databanks and many other information sources - in a way that is relevant to school teachers around the country and to an increasingly demanding general public. "We expect this to
really increase public use of our resources and encourage more co-operation between the libraries," Ms Flowers said.
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