May 9, 2005
Jerusalem, Israel
The Ex Libris Group is pleased to announce that 41 academic institutions, members of the Colleges Consortium in Israel, have chosen ALEPH 500™. Of these 41 institutions, 13 have chosen to migrate to the ALEPH 500 from other library automation systems. The remainder have chosen to upgrade their existing ALEPH 300 systems to ALEPH 500. The Colleges Consortium is comprised of leading academic and teachers colleges as well as special libraries in Israel.
The Colleges Consortium RFP process—for the State of Israels largest technological project for the library sector to date—included a combination of contenders representing both international and local library system vendors. The Colleges Consortium installation will be based on an ASP model, hosted on a central server in a dedicated facility. The consortium members may choose to further enhance their product suite in the future with ADAM—the ALEPH Digital Asset Management Module, SFX®—the context sensitive link server, and the MetaLib® library portal.
The Colleges Consortium feels most confident in its choice of Ex Libris and the ALEPH 500 system, based on the worldwide experience that the Company has in consortial environments, explained Rami Scheinberg, Coordinator of the Colleges Consortium Steering Committee. The majority of the consortium members found the Ex Libris integrated solution, based on the ALEPH 500 ASP model, to address all of the needs of the modern library. The constant evolution and development of the product as well as the support services, hardware and communication abilities that will serve the consortium, make us certain that this is the correct solution to improve the services that the college libraries offer to their students and academic staff.
We are honored to welcome the new members of the Colleges Consortium to the ALEPH 500 customer base and applaud our existing customers on their upgrade to ALEPH 500, says Matti Shem Tov, President and CEO of Ex Libris. I was particularly impressed with the efficient manner in which the consortium steering committee assembled this large group of independent and diverse members in to a cohesive unit with a common goal, and feel confident that following their thorough evaluation of a number of top-tier systems they have made the right choice in choosing ALEPH 500. We look forward to a long and fruitful relationship with the Consortium.
About Ex Libris:
Ex Libris is a leading worldwide developer and provider of high-performance applications for libraries, information centers, and researchers. ALEPH, the Ex Libris integrated library solution, has been installed at more than 1250 sites in 52 countries. MetaLib, the information portal for library collections, and SFX, the context-sensitive linking solution for heterogeneous electronic resources in the scholarly information environment, have collectively been purchased by more than 725 institutions in 36 countries. DigiTool, a solution for the construction of digital collections, and Verde, the new electronic resource management (ERM) system, round out the Ex Libris product suite.
