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[Ref-Links] SFX Press Release



Hi all,

I think the list will be interested in this press release.

Greetings

herbert van de sompel


PRESS RELEASE * PRESS RELEASE * PRESS RELEASE

For immediate release  -- For more information, contact
Oren Beit-Arie, Vice President, Research & Development @ 773-404-5527

Ex Libris acquires rights to SFX Reference Linking Software

February 4, 2000 Chicago, Illinois.    Ex Libris announced today that
the
company has acquired the sole rights to the SFX Reference Linking
Software
Solution from the University of Gent (Belgium) and will begin its
immediate
deployment. SFX will play a vital role in Ex Libris' new Internet
Strategy.

The wide use of hyperlinks on the World Wide Web has conditioned
Internet
users to expect similar linking convenience within other computer
environments, including digital library collections.   However, when you
want to ascertain the availability of items, it is still a case of
"hit-and-miss".

As the Web evolves, the creation of services that link related
information
entities is an area of strongly growing interest, particularly for the
research community and for managers of research-related information
systems.
Publishers, subscription agents, researchers and libraries are looking
for
ways to create value-added services through linking these entities.

"SFX is a groundbreaking tool for discovery and navigation that will
deliver
such linking services in the scholarly information environment" said
Oren
Beit-Arie, Vice President of Research and Development.  "SFX enables
linking
between all parts of an electronic collection: full-text repositories;
abstracting, indexing and citation databases; online library catalogs;
citations appearing in research articles and other web resources. For
instance, SFX allows publishers to provide links back to individual
libraries within the online journal pages. These links enable librarians
to
add customized online services for users based on their local resources
and
environment. "

Deployment Plan

Ex Libris, a leading worldwide developer of high performance
applications
for libraries and information centers, will be working with the
developers
of SFX - Herbert Van de Sompel and Patrick Hochstenbach - to deploy SFX
worldwide. Several renowned research institutions in the US and Europe
have
already expressed their interest in becoming early adopters.

Ex Libris is establishing an independent Information Services Division
of Ex
Libris (USA) Inc. that will be responsible for the development, sales
and
support of the SFX service.

Background

SFX is a system that dynamically interlinks numerous electronic
resources
and can be used in a wide range of digital libraries.  SFX is based on
the
research work about the reference linking problem undertaken by Herbert
Van
de Sompel at the University of Gent and the Los Alamos National
Laboratory.
It has been applied in the complex digital library environments of both
institutions. The solution has successfully demonstrated its ability to
dynamically create services interlinking:

· Abstracting and indexing databases (Inspec, Medline, PubMed, Public
Genome
database, MathSci, Compendex, LiSa, Current Contents, BIOSIS, Books in
Print, EconLit, Ulrich)
· Library catalogues
· Citation databases (ISI, SLAC/SPIRES)
· Citations in research papers (Wiley InterScience, American Physical
Society PROLA archive)
· e-print archives (Los Alamos xxx  and the experimental UPS Prototype
service),
· Internet Bookshops

All of the above were running on a wide variety of platforms
(SilverPlatter
ERL, Ex Libris Aleph 500, Geac Advance, Topic, etc.).

  The SFX solution is already highly acclaimed within the digital
library
research community. A number of articles have been published in D-Lib
magazine and SFX has been widely presented during the past year. For
further
details on SFX see the References below.

References

Halstead, Amy. 1999. PROLA: More Than Just a Pretty Acronym. APS News 8,
no.
8: 7. [http://www.aps.org/apsnews/0899/089914.html]

Spilka, Susan. Wiley InterScience Update. June 1999
[http://www.wiley.com/about/corpnews/wisupdate.html]. 29 September 1999.

Van de Sompel, Herbert and Patrick Hochstenbach. 1999. Reference linking
in
a hybrid library environment. Part 1: frameworks for linking. D-Lib
Magazine
5, no. 4.
[http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april99/van_de_sompel/04van_de_sompel-pt1.html]

Van de Sompel, Herbert and Patrick Hochstenbach. 1999. Reference linking
in
a hybrid library environment. Part 2:SFX, a generic linking solution.
D-Lib
Magazine 5, no. 4.
[http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april99/van_de_sompel/04van_de_sompel-pt2.html]

Van de Sompel, Herbert and Patrick Hochstenbach. 1999. Reference linking
in
a hybrid library environment. Part 3: Generalizing the SFX solution in
the
"SFX@Ghent & SFX@LANL" experiment. D-Lib Magazine 5, no. 10.
[http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october99/van_de_sompel/10van_de_sompel.html]

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