January 6, 2005
Boston, MA
Ex Libris, Inc., is pleased to announce that Five Colleges, Incorporated, has selected ALEPH 500™ to replace its existing Innovative Interfaces Inc. (III) library management system. As part of the procurement, the five colleges libraries have also selected Verde, Ex Libris’ electronic resource management system. The consortium, located in the Connecticut River Valley in western Massachusetts, is comprised of Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Five Colleges is adding ALEPH and Verde to its existing Ex Libris MetaLib® and SFX® installation.
Were really pleased to have concluded a contract with Ex Libris, and look forward to the challenges and excitement of implementing the new system. We believe that Ex Libris has a vision and group of products that will serve the five colleges libraries well, said Lorna Peterson, Executive Director of Five Colleges, Incorporated. Ms. Peterson also noted that the implementation of ALEPH 500 will allow Five Colleges faculty and students to see a fully integrated catalog of all five institutions holdings.
We have been using SFX and MetaLib, and our faculty and students have been really enthusiastic about the improved access to electronic resources, noted Gai Carpenter, Director, Library and Information Services, Hampshire College, who also serves as Chair of the Five Colleges Librarians Council. Managing these resources via Verde, said Carpenter, will continue to enhance our users research capabilities.
We are thrilled to welcome Five Colleges to the Ex Libris ALEPH family, and especially at their selection of Verde, commented Dan Trajman, President, Ex Libris, Inc. Five Colleges decision is major confirmation of the Ex Libris vision and execution in support of the evolving needs of the library management universe. The decision of the libraries of the five colleges to select Verde to manage the consortiums electronic resources is, in fact, the first contractual signing for Verde in North America and opens the door to what we are sure will be a robust market for Verde.
About Five Colleges, Incorporated:
Five Colleges is a nonprofit educational consortium established in 1965 to promote the educational and cultural objectives of its member institutions, which include four private, liberal arts colleges and the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts. As a group Five Colleges enroll over 24,000 undergraduates; in addition, the University of Massachusetts Amherst has 5,800 graduate students. The five colleges libraries have distinctive collections and the students and faculty benefit from extensive and long-standing cooperation among the libraries. The combined holdings total some 8 million volumes.
For additional information on Five Colleges, please see www.fivecolleges.edu
About Ex Libris:
Ex Libris is a leading worldwide developer of high-performance applications for libraries, information centers, and researchers. A multinational company, Ex Libris has offices around the world. ALEPH, the Ex Libris integrated library solution, has been installed at over 1250 sites and consortia in over 51 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 700 customers in 34 countries. DigiTool, a solution for constructing digital collections and Verde, the new Electronic Resource Management (ERM) system, round out the Ex Libris product suite.
