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The National Széchényi Library of Hungary (NSZL) announced the launch of the AMICUS library system to the Hungarian Library community in the last
days of December. AMICUS was customized to meet the needs of the library by providing full support for the Hungarian MARC (HUNMARC) format, becoming the only available system complying with the latest HUNMARC
standard. Both the library system and the OPAC are in use at the library in the Hungarian and English language, incorporating support for an extended character set (handling over 600 hundred characters) based on the
Central and Eastern European Latin II character set.
"As we were convinced during the implementation phase AMICUS and LibriVision are indeed state-of-the-art tools and we are quite happy that the
National Library of Hungary can now use them for the provision of its most important services. We are also sure that the milestone of launching the AMICUS system is only the first - albeit a very important - one in
the cooperation between the National Széchényi Library and ELiAS. We think that having become accustomed to the uniquely rich and efficient features of the system our
users - readers and librarians alike - will see it as one of
the most beneficial means of their everyday access to the services of the library and a long awaited enhancement." - said Péter Hegedűs, Deputy Director General of the NSZL.
The Széchényi Library collects, preserves and provides access to the collections of Hungarian cultural heritage.
As a National Library, its responsibilities include the publication of the National Bibliography, the maintenance of the Union catalogue for foreign books and periodicals, ISBN/ISSN registration and the delivery of bibliographic descriptions to other libraries. AMICUS successfully meets these requirements and has the proven ability to manage large amounts of bibliographic data, an indispensable necessity for any National Library.
According to Paul Boesmans, the general manager of ELiAS, "We've built a long-lasting and rewarding relationship with the NZSL. I am
delighted that the project has been successful. It has been a challenging project both for ourselves and for the library staff, but it has been mutually beneficial. The extensive development required to
support the special character sets has made us a market leader in this area. We look forward to continuing our support of AMICUS and LibriVision for the National Library of Hungary in the future. The National
Library of Hungary is the perfect base from which to extend our activities in Central & Eastern Europe."
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First European national library for Amicus
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NSZL is the first National Library in Europe to go into production with AMICUS. Some of the
world’s leading national libraries use AMICUS to manage their bibliographic data and LibriVision to search local and external databases, including the National Library of Australia and
the National Library of Canada.
EliAS has a long-lasting relationship with the National Library, having provided DOBIS/LIBIS
support and maintenance for over a decade. AMICUS and LibriVision will help bring the library into the next era of library automation.
Senior staff involved in the entire project were particularly pleased with the successful migration
from DOBIS/LIBIS, as Ádám Horvath, System Librarian commented: “The National Széchényi Library is greatly satisfied with the migration from DOBIS/LIBIS to AMICUS. Everything
happened on time according to the project plan of migration. There was 0% loss of data: every bibliographic, copy and acquisition record was moved from DOBIS to AMICUS. The librarians
continued their work in every module of AMICUS where they had stopped in DOBIS. The production AMICUS system has been stable from the very first moment. With the help of ELIAS
we managed to accomplish a "dream" migration”.
LibriVision, provided by ELiAS, is the new Online Public Catalogue (OPAC) of NSZL and it is
being used to improve accessibility to services offered by the library.
As an enhancement to its content the renewed OPAC now includes bibliographic data starting
from the year 1976. The loading of the data currently stored in separate MicroIsis databases into AMICUS is carried out gradually and continuously.
The use of the newly implemented LibriVision requires just an Internet browser, (The URL of the OPAC is http://nektar.oszk.hu/).
The following main services are available through the OPAC:
- Search the NSZL's catalogue online.
- Simultaneous search of the catalogues of Hungarian libraries using Z 39.50 servers.
- Simultaneous search of the catalogues of some of the largest libraries in the world.
- Storage of search history (within one session).
- Storage of hits (within one session).
- Browse the indices of AMICUS.
- Browse the indices of other libraries if their remote databases support that function.
- The hit records may be downloaded or e-mailed by users either in MARC or HTML formats.
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Amicus 3.3 released - features
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Leuven, December 28 2000
V3.3 features important new enhancements, notably the following:
- A new advanced Acquisitions module.
- Full Euro support.
- New search indexes - Branch, Location and Copy and Barcode Number.
- Further GUI enhancements.
- Support for inventory numbers in cataloguing.
- New enhanced functionality in cataloguing.
- Update to Billing module
- Greater security provision
- Pre-loaded reports may be customized
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