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 Brent Council Libraries Service,
serving the UK’s London Borough of Brent, has recently signed a large contract with , the world’s leader in library automation systems, advancing
their ability to serve their patrons with an enhanced Dynix ™ automation system and the adding new system-delivered services in branches throughout the borough. Brent Council
Libraries, already users of the Dynix ™ system (delivered via FM contract for several years), will be adding features, modules and products that will extend their range of services,
completely refresh technology in terms of hardware, as well as adding network and graphical software products. The renewal of
epixtech’s contract symbolizes continuing confidence in the delivery and flexibility of epixtech’s facilities management (FM) services, with the contract being awarded after on open tender
exercise in line with the council’s procurement rules. Brent, the eighth largest of the London Borough Councils, has 14 libraries/library service points including one of the UK’s leading
community history museums and serves an area of approximately 250,000 residents.
The new services will be provided through an FM contract, a service pioneered by epixtech’s
UK office and in place in Brent and several other public authorities and organizations. epixtech will be managing a host of automated library services, including the delivery of the Dynix ™
automation system and office applications via Citrix thin client technology; Internet and WebPAC services using a dedicated 256K pipeline from the London offices of epixtech. The solution also
includes management of a networked CD-ROM service, and management of a third-party museums and archive system using epixtech’s PAC for Windows™ as the integrating tool for all
these services, as well as a GSM enabled mobile library solution. In addition, epixtech will be providing e-mail services and a maintenance service for peripherals and hardware. The library
services will operate alongside lifelong learning and IT training facilities provided by Internet Exchange, Brent’s other major project Partner, who also supported the launch event.
"Although our libraries, museums and library service points will still have the same personal touch
from our staff, our patrons will now be able to access all 14 libraries’ entire collections via their home computers as well— just one of the new services we’ll be offering," points out Karen
Tyreman, Brent Council Head of Libraries and Lifelong Learning. "We’ve been able to incorporate many services from the Dynix system we’ve been using, but the new services and
systems we’ll be offering our library users and which we’ll use ourselves are really exciting. It puts us on the cutting edge of library technology and provision."
Brent Council is a highly user-oriented London borough library system with fourteen libraries or
library service points. It serves an ethnically diverse and densely populated area of 250,000 residents. It is Brent Council’s aim to be a focus of community access to knowledge, information,
works of the imagination, culture and heritage. As London’s most multicultural borough, Brent Council plans to listen to and involve all communities in Brent, thereby improving the quality of
local people’s lives. Brent intends to use the partnership with epixtech to implement the principles of the Peoples Network and to launch a major Heritage Lottery Fund application.
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