In October 1996 the Israel
Association of University Heads created a full
time position of network coordinator with central
responsibility for ALEPH in the universities as
well as other aspects of computerization in the
university libraries.
The coordinator represents the
universities before the Ex-Libris company,
oversees the preparation of the annual
development plan and its execution, insures the
proper functioning of the network, chairs the
Inter-University Committee of ALEPH Coordinators
and deals with all other joint issues relating to
ALEPH and library automation.
All the university libraries are
linked together in a network which allows
shifting (via command BASE ...) from one library
to another. The network currently (as of August
1997) consists of 27 library catalogs, 39
bibliographic files and projects, two union
catalogs (serials and monographs) and three files
of Library of Congress authority and
bibliographic data. Two additional libraries (The
Open University and Hebrew Union College,
Jerusalem) are currently linked to the network
and several additional non-university libraries
will be linked to the network in the near future.
Network tables and common files are maintained
with the help of a central file server and
several special routines have been written to
facilitate coordinating and maintaining
up-to-date tables at all network nodes.
During 1996-97 the last libraries
using ALEPH version 2 converted to ALEPH-3,
greatly facilitating smooth switching between
libraries (switching between versions was
possible but cumbersome). One last file (the
national Union List of Monographs) still remains
in ALEPH-2 on the old central computer and will
be converted to ALEPH-3 (with a series of
enhancements) in the near future.
One of the decisions of the ALEPH
Coordinators Committee this year was to insist on
maintaining the identical version and patch
(325-16) of ALEPH throughout the university
network and that all ongoing corrections must be
implemented on all network computers. This has
led to a much more stable situation than we had
in past years.
The new contract between the
university libraries and Ex-Libris includes a
mechanism for development, and much effort of the
Coordinators Committee and indeed all the
inter-university professional committees
(cataloging, circulation, acquisitions,
reference, etc.) went into preparing and
selecting the most important development
requests. Some desired enhancements were rejected
by Ex-Libris, however a list of some 100
"points" of development was finally
prepared, approved and submitted to Ex-Libris in
February 1997. These developments are included in
ALEPH version 326-7 which was just completed and
is now being checked. It will presumably be
installed throughout the network shortly and will
be the standard version for the coming year.
In view of the large number of
global libraries in the network, and frequent
additions and changes, several improvements were
instituted in the way the network functions.
These include a standard and uniform set of
network menus (themselves a global library on the
network) and a composite file of all remote
screens. With the addition of several Unix
systems planned for the near future we hope to
use an NFS server to maintain one set of remote
files and tables for all these computers. Several
of the libraries have recently implemented the
ALEPH WWW server. Hopefully more will do so in
the coming year and it will be possible to set up
a web menu to most of the network as well.
Major changes were also
instituted in the national Union List of Serials.
Holdings of each library were assigned a unique
code and UTIL-42 was used to allow member
libraries to update their own holdings only
(being gradually implemented).
Detailed information on the
network libraries, computer configurations and
ALEPH files, as well as links to the library
homepages and web catalogs can be found at the
network web site: http://www6.huji.ac.il/libnet/