Tel Aviv University
Institution name:
We share the Aleph server with the other four libraries of Tel Aviv University.
The library is fully computerized from 1990. It serves the Faculty of Social Sciences and the Faculty of Management. It contains more than 200,000 volumes and 1700 current periodical subscriptions. It serves 3000 readers daily and has 550 seats in the reading areas.
In addition, the library offers a range of electronic information sources. These include: retrieval from ON-LINE DATABASES from all over the world; searches in the University's CD-ROM network which contains indexes, abstracts, and full text databases of journal literature.
The library also houses an European Documentation Centre. The Centre was established within the framework of agreements to maintain publications of the European Union in university libraries worldwide for the purpose of studying, teaching and researching European integration and cooperation. In accordance with these agreements, the centre receives on a regular basis most of the official EU publications in such areas as economics, society, social problems and legislation.
Shortly before the last ICAU meeting we switched to version 3.2_5 (from version 2.5). As this was a major change for our library, it took us some months to adjust to it. Almost from the beginning it was clear we would have to greatly increase the memory and disk space of our new Alpha server. This was done in Dec. 1995. We had some problems with the periodicals' conversion, and found some other annoying bugs. These were partly solved by the patch we got in Feb. 1996. Since then things more or less stabilized.
We hope to receive and implement the 3M's self-check system in the near future. This wasa project planned for 1996, but it couldn't be implemented because we needed a Hebrew interface forit, and had to wait for Ex Libris to develop it.
We should receive the Aleph WWW server software in the near future and hope to give access to our library catalog through WWW.