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State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil
The new Virtua system at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) was unveiled in mid-December 1999 in a ceremony welcoming more than 150
participants. Among them there were prestigious guests including the president of the University, the head of FAPESP's Scientific Committee, UNICAMP's head librarian and VTLS Americas representatives.
The implementation of Virtua at UNICAMP is the first in South America.
UNICAMP selected Virtua after a thorough examination of systems, citing Virtua's user interface, ease of use, flexibility, and comprehensive
functionality as the major factors in their decision. UNICAMP has a long tradition of library automation and had previously used a system developed by their university.
The need to replace a system tailored to their own local needs played a role in their decision-making process. In looking for a replacement, the automation review committee focused on finding a system that would improve upon their home-grown system, offering an outstanding user interface, powerful searching capabilities, highly integrated functionality, multimedia capabilities and integration with the Internet. Virtua exceeded all of their requirements.
"With the successful implementation of Virtua, UNICAMP Library places itself at the forefront of information technology and sets the direction
for other Brazilian libraries to follow," noted Jack Bazuzi, Vice-President of VTLS Inc. "VTLS is proud to be associated with one of Brazil's most prestigious universities."
Virtua upgrades VTLS System at Mary Washington College
Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia, has become the first VTLS customer to migrate from the classic VTLS-99 software to Virtua.
The migration included all of Mary Washington's installed VTLS subsystems, including OPAC (with V~ Gateway), Cataloging, Circulation, Serials Control, Acquisitions and Reserve Room Control. As a part of the migration, VTLS Inc. converted all data from the VTLS system to Virtua. This milestone is the first of many scheduled migrations from VTLS to Virtua in the U.S. and around the world.
"We are excited about the third-generation technology that Virtua represents," commented LeRoy Strohl, Library Director, Simpson Library
at Mary Washington College, "and about the additional functional capabilities that Virtua will provide to both faculty and students."
Mary Washington College has been using VTLS software since 1985.
The Simpson Library holds over 300,000 volumes with approximately 1,300 current periodicals.
Virtua with Unicode Chinese support Installed at
Tamkang University, Taiwan
Tamkang University, Taiwan's oldest private institution of higher learning, has recently completed
installation of the Unicode Chinese version of Virtua.
Tamkang is installing Virtua OPAC (with WWW Gateway), Cataloging, Circulation, Serials Control and Acquisitions modules. VTLS Inc. has converted and loaded data from their customized Dobis-Libis system, converting the character set from Big-5 to Unicode. Tamkang's data includes materials in Chinese, Japanese and Russian in addition to Latin-1 data.
This installation highlights the successful partnership between Tamkang and VTLS Inc. in refining development of the Chinese version of Virtua,
including Chinese sorting, Chinese MARC to US MARC data conversion, and translation of the user interface.
Tamkang selected Virtua after conducting a thorough review of available solutions. Virtua's inherent support of Unicode and Z39.50, integrated display capabilities for non Latin scripts, and overall design were key factors in the decision. The ability for Virtua to simultaneously display Chinese, Japanese, Russian and western languages demonstrated the power and flexibility of the software.
"Tamkang University has been a wonderful partner to work with," remarked Vinod Chachra, president of VTLS Inc.
"The dedication and expertise of Tamkang's staff has added considerably to the quality of the implementation of Chinese in Virtua."
Tamkang University's Chueh Sheng Memorial Library includes an ultra-modem nine story main library, a Maritime Museum and two branch libraries.
Library holdings consist of over 700,000 books, over 6,000 periodical titles, nearly 100,000 non-book materials and a broad selection of electronic databases.
Virtua Acquisitions Goes Live at RERO, Switzerland
The Bibliothèque Cantonale et Universitaires (BCUF) in Fribourg, Switzerland, has started using Virtua Acquisitions in production mode, marking the
first "live" use of Virtua Acquisitions.
The implementation is also the first to make use of Virtua's unique capability of managing Acquisitions for local libraries from a Union Catalog, in this case the RERO Union Catalog. BCUF is a member of the RERO consortium which had earlier migrated their VTLS-99 Union Catalog to Virtua. The Union Catalog implementation of Virtua Acquisitions allows streamlined workflows for RERO member institutions while ensuring confidentiality of local data.
BCUF's requirements for an Acquisitions system are demanding. "Our Library spends 3.4 million Swiss Francs each year on books and
materials," noted Pierre Buntschu, BCU-Fribourg's Project Manager.
"We order from 600 suppliers from about 20 countries. Each year we place about 18,000 orders. We are happy to be the first user of the Virtua Acquisitions system. We have started using it in production mode. On the basis of our initial tests, Virtua Acquisitions is very complete and powerful." With the implementation of Virtua Acquisitions at BCUF all of the major subsystems of Virtua are available in production mode.
Bibliothèque Cantonale et Universitaire in Fribourg is a Union Catalog serving 16 libraries and is one of seven regional union catalogs that in turn
contribute to the Réseau des bibliothèques romandes et tessoines (RERO). The RERO consortium consists of a total of 183 libraries.
The RERO Union Catalog is currently the largest Virtua database, containing 3.4 million holdings with nearly 2.5 million bibliographic records and 85,000 multilingual authority records.
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