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Monday, January 24, 2005
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Tuesday, September 21, 2004
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Blacksburg, VA - VTLS is pleased to announce that Goddard College has selected the Virtua Integrated Library System to automate their Eliot D. Pratt Library for the future. Goddard College, located in Plainfield, Vermont, was founded in 1863 as a Goddard Seminary, and is recognized for its innovative approach to education. The College's mission is to advance the theory and practice of learning by undertaking new experiments based upon the ideals of democracy and the principles of progressive education first asserted by John Dewey.
Goddard College Library will be implementing the Virtua ILS through VTLS' Collection Hosting Services, an ASP service model that provides low-cost access to the latest in visionary ILS technology. This will be the Library's first ever integrated library system and they plan on taking full advantage of the functional benefits offered through Virtua's advanced system design and architecture. Goddard students will be able to utilize features like the Vectors iPortal with advanced skin technology for web access, and SDI (Selective Dissemination of Information), which provides enhanced outreach capabilities by automatically transmitting update notifications on new library holdings to students.
In addition, library users will be able to access the catalog through Virtua's Web / PDA interface, and both staff and students will benefit from Virtua's implementation of FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records), a technology that streamlines cataloging and consolidates resources for easy access. "I am very excited about the implementation of the new system," said Clara Bruns Director of Goddard College Library." We felt that the Virtua system was very advanced and more than matched up with our vision for the future. I look forward to establishing a productive relationship with VTLS.
3:59:22 PM 
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Monday, August 16, 2004
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To all Virtua Customers:
Earlier this year VTLS announced tentative plans for the introduction of Oracle 9 and 10 on various platforms over the next two years. In addition, we indicated when we expected to upgrade operating systems and of course, the schedule for release of the Virtua software itself.
To reiterate, Virtua 43, our current release, is presently available in Oracle 8; however, Oracle will drop support for release 8 in December 2004. We strongly recommend that customers move to Oracle 9 as soon as possible. Advance planning is essential as new hardware may be necessary; Oracle 9 requires 64-bit architecture on all platforms except Intel/Linux. .
Virtua 44, due for release in all platforms during June and July 2004, will be available in Oracle 9 as indicated in the accompanying chart. Looking ahead, Oracle has released version 10g and customers should begin to prepare for this upgrade as well. Oracle 10 contains some nice benefits designed for the low-end user, including a friendlier user interface and faster backup processes. The transition from Oracle 9 to 10 should not require additional hardware resources. VTLS plans to upgrade quickly to Oracle 10 on all platforms so that we can continue to provide visionary solutions for our customers and remain competitive in the marketplace.
Based upon our experience working with Oracle 8 & 9, we have found that supporting Virtua on all platforms for both versions to be unduly problematic and therefore will not be offering release 44 on Oracle 8. Customers currently on release 43 will continue to receive full support including bug fixes for this version on Oracle 8 as long as Oracle support remains available through the end of the calendar year.
In addition to Oracle upgrades, customers need to plan for operating system upgrades, as the two are often inseparable. Current Linux customers on Oracle 8 should be using Red Hat 7.2 with Virtua 43. Previously we had suggested that Red Hat 8 & 9 could be used; however, subsequent experience has demonstrated that these versions are not as stable and we can only fully support release 43 with Oracle 8 on Red Hat 7.2. Linux customer will need to upgrade to Red Hat Enterprise AS or ES along with Oracle 9 to move to Virtua release 44 or higher.
HP customers currently running HP-UX 11 and Oracle 8 will need to upgrade to HP-UX11i and Oracle 9 for Virtua release 44; and IBM customers currently running AIX 5 and Oracle 8 with release 43 will need to upgrade to AIX 5.2 and Oracle 9 for Virtua release 44.
Please refer to the attached chart for details concerning the upgrade path for each platform's OS and RDBMS as it relates to each Virtua release. This chart can be used as a planning tool; however, the information contained does not represent a final commitment from VTLS. These are tentative plans and are subject to change based on actions by third party vendors and suppliers. Please contact VTLS in advance of purchasing any hardware or software required to support your installation.
If you have any questions please contact your nearest support office.
VTLS Inc, (USA)
hotline@vtls.com
1-800-858-8857
12:11:48 PM
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Dear Customers,
In case you weren't at ALA, or didn't get a chance to come by our busy
booth, (and if you were one of those who made it busy, thank you!)
there were a lot of exciting announcements made by VTLS that we want to
be sure you know about. These included (just click on the link to get
the full
story):
Major new sales:
1. VIRTUA selected for New York University and its consortium
libraries.
5. VTLS sets VECTORS on powerful federated searching through partnership
with MuseGlobal.
Thanks for your interest and support.
Sincerely,
12:10:17 PM
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Tuesday, August 10, 2004
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Saturday, April 24, 2004
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Followup to Internet flaw discovery. Steffers writes "CNET reports that the threat to the stability of the internet may not be as great as first reported. "The actual threat to the Internet is really small right now," [Paul] Watson said. "You could have isolated attacks against small networks, but they would most likely be able to recover quickly." They report that there is software that can fix the flaw." [LISNews.com]
8:52:16 AM
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Thursday, April 22, 2004
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UHF Spec proposed for International RFID. SEO writes "The new proposed specification for the next generation of RFID (define) technology isultra-high-frequency short-range communicationsthat will interoperate on an international level.http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/334315 1" [LISNews.com]
7:52:16 AM
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Serious flaw discovered in the Internet. Steffers writes "Yahoo! reports that security experts and ISPs have been quietly working for months to seal a serious flaw in the Internet. The flaw takes advantage of weaknesses in the TCP and could be used to bring large-scale instability to the Internet." [LISNews.com]
7:51:52 AM
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Thursday, April 15, 2004
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Friday, April 09, 2004
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Google partners with universities to mine invisible academic literature. Jeffrey R. Young, Google Teams Up with 17 Colleges to Test Searches of Scholarly Materials, Chronicle of Higher Education Daily Update, April 9, 2004. MIT and 16 other institutions are collaborating with Google, who, pending the success of the test project, will activate a feature that enables searching of online repositories such as DSpace. MacKenzie Smith of MIT is quoted. "A lot of times the richest scholarly literature is buried" in search-engine results, said Ms. Smith. "As more and more content is on the Web, it's harder and harder to find the high-quality stuff that you need." The universities extensive use of metadata and OCLC's involvement in developing a search configuration for the test promise a highly useful search tool across multiple collections. [Open Access News]
11:42:04 AM
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Thursday, April 08, 2004
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Introduction to The European Library. Britta Woldering, The European Library: Integrated access to the national libraries of Europe, Access, March 2004. Excerpt: "The European Library (TEL) Project [was] completed at the end of January 2004. The key aim of TEL was to investigate the feasibility of establishing a new Pan-European service which would ultimately give access to the combined resources of the national libraries of Europe....The European Library service will be a portal which offers integrated access to the combined resources of the national libraries of Europe. It will offer free searching for both digital and non-digital resources and will deliver digital objects - some free, some priced....The publishers' view on The European Library is mixed. On the one hand, they see the possibility of new distribution channels by including their networked electronic publications in the national bibliographies and consequently in the catalogues of the national libraries. On the other hand, they fear that their commercial interests could be jeopardised." [Open Access News]
1:46:43 PM
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Libraries struggle to stay hightech. Gary Price shares with us an article about the cost of maintaining "free" computers in libraries with hemorrhaging budgets. "Like libraries across the country, Hartford got its computers for free, through grants. But experts are worried that U.S. libraries — especially smaller ones with nickel-thin budgets — will have a hard time paying for software upgrades and hardware replacements that are needed every few years. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other organizations recently released a report warning about the potential loss of computer service. Although budget cuts have hurt libraries of all sizes, the smallest ones, in places like Hartford, are most at risk, the report cautioned." [LISNews.com]
1:45:46 PM
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Monday, April 05, 2004
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More on Kahle v. Ashcroft. Andrea Foster, Scholar Sues for Free Online Access to Out-of-Print Books, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 9, 2004 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt: "A prominent legal scholar has filed a federal lawsuit in an attempt to allow old books and films to be placed in Internet archives where anyone can use them freely. The scholar, Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University law professor and cyberspace theorist, is challenging copyright law on behalf of two Internet archives that scholars use and are helping to develop....[The Internet Archive and the Prelinger Archives] ask the court to declare as unconstitutional, when considered collectively, the Copyright Act of 1976, the Berne Convention Implementation Act, and the Copyright Renewal Act. The plaintiffs also want the court to declare as unconstitutional, when considered together, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and the Copyright Renewal Act....At issue in the lawsuit, filed last month, is the accessibility of so-called 'orphan' works: out-of-print books and old films, videos, and scholarly articles that have no apparent commercial value but are inaccessible to the public because of copyright restrictions....The plaintiffs argue that scholars and others are being denied widespread access to creative works over the Internet because of burdensome and outdated copyright laws." (PS: To follow new developments, see the Stanford Center for Internet and Society web page on the case.) [Open Access News]
1:25:04 PM
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Monday, March 08, 2004
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Can RSS Relieve Information Overload?.
A lengthy article appeared in Econtent Magazine today, entitled, Can RSS Relieve Information Overload?. Our good buddy Karen Schneider is quoted in a sidebar (scroll down), which I'm quoting here in full:
"Karen Schneider is the library director for the state of California's library Web portal, Librarian's Index to the Internet. As a librarian, she's found RSS to be an invaluable research tool. She discovered RSS after reading about it in Peter Scott's library blog. She says she quickly realized how valuable RSS could be for rapid dissemination of information while at the same time, it reduces email. "This is the year that everyone has become fed up with email and more and more content has become available in RSS feeds," she says. In a short time, she joined the chorus of librarians singing the praises of RSS, even posting an RSS tutorial on her blog, The Free Range Librarian."
"She was amazed at how much material was available as RSS feeds. "I was stunned at what I can pick up: National Weather service, the New York Times [and many others]." She also monitors librarian blogs through her news aggregator. She says, "I spend a lot of time reading other librarian's blogs and feeds."
"Schneider, an adjunct professor at the library school at San Jose State, had a student who wrote an RSS feed for her lii.org Web site as a project. She plans to go live with an RSS link from her site in the near future. RSS is a natural fit for her Web site as it changes regularly. Instead of visiting each day to see what's new, RSS subscribers will know any time something new appears on the Web site, and for busy librarians, that's a big advantage."
As an aside, I'm glad to be reading about RSS in yet another InfoToday publication. Plus, I'll be speaking about RSS this week at the Computers in Libraries conference in D.C. (an InfoToday sponsored event). Yet, I wonder why Infotoday has yet to hop on the RSS bandwagon by providing feeds for their content? I would even be willing to look at a few ads to get summaries of the articles that they already provide for free. Oh well, I guess that's what the speakers cocktail party is for...to nudge, nudge, and nudge again. [Library Stuff]
4:29:49 PM
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Monday, January 12, 2004
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Outsell's predictions for 2004. Outsell has released 13 predictions for the information content industry in 2004. Here's prediction #6: "The Open Access movement in scholarly and scientific publications will gain legitimacy."
In a separate, downloadable report to accompany the predictions, Outsell says this about open access (p. 9): "The Open Access movement in scholarly and scientific publications will gain legitimacy as it transforms from a loose collection of disjointed initiatives into a new model backed by major universities and institutions worldwide....Academic institutions and the scholarly publishing world have been at loggerheads for years over the increasing cost of journal subscriptions. The irony is that most scholarly content is created by individuals employed by universities, who are then required to pay for it again in the form of published works. The new Public Library of Science is only the most prominent in a series of open-access challenges to the scholarly publishing industry, which finds itself in a real crisis situation as users and the organizations they work for start to revolt. As steam gathers under institutional archiving initiatives like DSpace, the infrastructure will be in place to support peer-to-peer from the get-go. Where there is a will, there is a way, and technology is providing the 'way' to enable creative new solutions for distribution, access, and sharing of scholarly content. Watch for even more radical and flexible knowledge-sharing initiatives in this space that will increasingly call into question the structure of an entire publishing sector." [Open Access News]
6:53:24 PM
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Tuesday, January 06, 2004
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January 06, 2004: For Immediate Release
VIRTUA Version 43 Released
Blacksburg, VA - VTLS announced today the release of VIRTUA Version 43. This is a major release of the product for a number of reasons: not only does the new version feature extensive new functionality but the development was completed using all new ISO 9001 quality based enhancement, design, development, quality assurance and Beta testing processes.
The new version contains over 250 functional improvements including enhancements to selection lists, NCIP and OpenURL support, User Reviews and Ratings in the iPortal, the ability to save and retrieve serial pattern records in the serials module as well as extensive enhancements throughout the product to support the implementation of FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records). A large number of the improvements were the direct result of customer suggestions fed into the new enhancement process being used at VTLS. “We’re very proud of Version 43 of Virtua,” said Carl Grant, President and COO of VTLS.
“We worked very closely with our customers and other interested parties to define exactly what would go into this release and to design it in a way that will result in a superior offering for our customers. This release is a direct result of the changes we’ve recently implemented regarding our product planning and release, including our newly implemented Beta testing arrangements with our customers to ensure the highest possible quality upon final release. Our customers will see major benefits in the ease of implementation and overall product satisfaction as a result of the revised processes.”
Several customers have already installed Release 43 and very happy with the results and the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium became the first Release 43 user to fully implement all the new capabilities of FRBR in their production online catalog.
8:16:52 AM
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InformationToday asks info industry execs about the year ahead. In "What's Ahead for 2004," eleven high-profile players in the information industry share their thoughts on significant developments to follow in the next year. Only two, the British Library's Lynne Brindley and Sabine Brünger-Weilandt of FIZ Karlsruhe, mention open access, and mainly as something to watch, one model among many alternatives, without yet pronouncing on its impact or viability; others such as Outsell's Anthea Stratigos and Ingenta's Mark Rowse note the increasing role of XML and RSS in seamless delivery of content. [Open Access News]
7:42:47 AM
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Ways To Save The Internet. stevenb writes "Information professionals certainly have an interest in how well the Internet works, which is why you're likely to enjoy Wired's list of 101 suggestions for how to save the Internet from the forces of evil that are currently making Internet use a real pain. My favorite is number 8 - Declare spammers are terrorists and put Ashcroft, Ridge, and Rumsfeld on their tails. You'll find the the list in the Wired archives." [LISNews.com]
7:41:13 AM
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Saturday, January 03, 2004
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Paula Hane's 2003 wrap-up. Paul Hane, The Latest Developments in Open Access, E-Books, and More, Information Today, January 2, 2004. A round-up of 2003 news, including the Elsevier cancellations, BioMed Central advances, the ALA open forum on open access and related issues at the Midwinter Meeting, and the WSIS. [Open Access News]
11:00:05 AM
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© Copyright 2005 VTLS .
Last update: 3/21/2005; 1:32:46 PM.
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