Endeavor's Voyager selected as the new library system

Library Journal

described

Endeavor

as the

library

automation

success

story

of the

1990s.

Following a thorough evaluation of several competitive systems, the University has selected a successor to the PALS software, that has been in use in the Library since 1988. The successful vendor is Endeavor Information Systems Incorporated of Des Plaines, Illinois, and the product is called Voyager.

Major factors that influenced the selection of Voyager were its functionality and software capabilities, the capacity for information exchange with other University administrative systems, the capacity to support the University’s future directions, Voyager’s use of state of the art technology, and Endeavor’s growing predominance in the market place.

It was a prerequisite that the new library system must be capable of supporting the future information needs of the University in the context of its Learning and Teaching Operational Plan and the Monash Plan. The selection committee was unanimous in its conclusion that Voyager was the system that best meets these needs.

It is designed for today’s internet environment and takes full advantage of the capabilities of the web. In addition to a web front -end, it has a number of “self-help” features that will be available to students and staff via the web.

Discovering resources via the on-line catalogue is markedly superior to PALS and other library systems. In its image server module, Voyager provides functionality that will enable the Library to rapidly scale up several of its innovative service delivery projects like electronic reserve and Audio-on-Demand, and integrate them more fully with other library services.

The agreement with Endeavor Information Systems includes a detailed implementation schedule. The expectation is that loans and the on-line catalogue will be in use by February next year. Other modules will be installed later in 1999.

Endeavor is a relatively new entrant into the library systems market place, but in a short time has become extremely successful. It has targeted its product primarily at university and research libraries. In 1997 it sold the Voyager system to 64 libraries, 45 of which were academic libraries. There are now more than 120 installed sites. Most are in the United States, but Endeavor is also marketing successfully in other countries.

The Library Journal, America’s pre-eminent library industry publication, described Endeavor as “the library automation success story of the 1990s”. Prestigious purchasers of Voyager in the past six months include the Library of Congress in Washington (the world’s largest library) and the National Library of New Zealand. Voyager systems have also been sold to a number of former PALS sites.

The library is confident that with Voyager, Monash will be acquiring the system of the future and will benefit from software enhancements driven by a customer base of some of the world’s leading libraries. If you’d like to find out more about the system, visit Endeavor’s web site at: http://www.endinfosys.com

Journal cancellations

The fall in the value of the Australian dollar has meant that the Library’s purchasing power for monographs and serials was effectively reduced by $1 million this year. The problem is compounded by the inexorable increase in the cost of serial subscriptions ranging from 10% to 15%. In order to stay within budget, the Library has had to embark on a major serials cancellation program. The total amount cancelled was nearly $800,000, of which about 60% represents journal cancellations in the STM (Science, Technology and Medical) area.

In June a letter was circulated to all academic heads of departments outlining some of the steps that the Library has undertaken to ameliorate the situation. These include:

• establishing a mechanism to share information resources with the University of Melbourne under the umbrella of the Monash-Melbourne protocol
• the exchange of serial cancellation lists with other Victorian university libraries, to try to ensure that the same titles are not cancelled by every library
• rationalising duplication of titles across the Monash campuses
• at the national level, cooperating with the Academies to draw national attention to the crisis faced by research libraries in Australia
• negotiating with DEETYA through CAUL for funding to pilot the establishment of a network of discipline-based Cooperative Information Centres
• jointly with other Victorian universities negotiating bulk purchasing deals with vendors
• at the national level, participating in consortium negotiations to get better deals from suppliers of electronic information resources

These activities will merely slow the serials crisis, not solve it.

A paper To publish and perish, was prepared by the Association of Research Libraries, the Association of American Universities, and the Pew Higher Education Roundtable [http://arl.cni.org/scomm/pew/]. It outlines the nature of the difficulties in comprehensive detail and emphasises that the problem can only be solved by the concerted effort of university administrators, academic staff, librarians, and scholarly societies. It is significant that the AVCC has taken note of this paper and, perhaps for the first time, university librarians who have for more than a decade tried to alert academics and university administrators to the looming crisis, will no longer be lone voices crying in the wilderness. This illustration (left) is reproduced from: To publish and perish In Policy Perspectives vol. 7, no 4, March, 1998

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