Partnership Results in Ground-breaking Support for Chinese, Japanese and Korean Character Sets

PROVO, UT, October 31, 2008 – Stanford University and SirsiDynix, the global leader in strategic technology solutions for libraries, today officially announced the completion of a project that allows searching and display of the library’s Chinese, Japanese, and Korean holdings in the original scripts. In a previous related project, functionality for searching, sorting, and displaying was made available for Arabic and Hebrew scripts.

Stanford and SirsiDynix worked together for over a year to make support for Asian and other non-Roman character sets a reality in the Stanford environment. In order to make the character sets available and of the highest quality, Stanford and SirsiDynix partnered on the intricate details of searching, sorting, and displaying of multiple character sets in a single collection for both patron and staff access. Stanford Libraries’ language experts assisted and offered enhancement suggestions to culminate in the most accurate, high-quality search solution available. Stanford moved from their original SirsiDynix Unicorn library system to a newer system—SirsiDynix Symphony®—and a Unicode platform to make the character set display possible.

Catherine Tierney, Associate University Librarian for Technical Services at Stanford, said, “This project was a successful partnership between Stanford and SirsiDynix. Stanford Libraries provided language expertise and input to the required functionality, and SirsiDynix development was very responsive. When Stanford discovered issues during testing and implementation, SirsiDynix worked hard and ensured critical needs were addressed before production implementation.”

Finding information in other language scripts is crucial to many Stanford scholars. In fact, states Assunta Pisani, Associate University Librarian for Collections and Services at Stanford, "Offering native character support for our Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew and Arabic scholars has been a critical priority for Stanford University Libraries, and we are delighted finally to be able to do so. The ability to search, sort, and display records of our significant holdings in these scripts represents a vast improvement in the potential for discovery and access to these materials through our catalog.”

Gary Rautenstrauch, CEO at SirsiDynix, said, “The SirsiDynix and Stanford partnership was a success for both parties—and for patrons who will be assisted with this new functionality. This partnership has expanded the capabilities of our Unicode offering to further the extensive multilingual access that supports the research and educational needs of all people.”

Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources supports Stanford’s mission of teaching, learning, and research by making information and knowledge accessible and preserving it for the future. The libraries have amassed rich collections of more than 8.5 million volumes in the humanities, social sciences, science and engineering.

To see the new Chinese, Japanese and Korean character set functionality, go to http://socrates.stanford.edu/.

For further information about support for Latin-based and non-Latin character sets, contact SirsiDynix at
1-800-288-2080, extension 1 or email sales@sirsidynix.com.

Symphony Implementation Brings Accolades for Significant Quality and Productivity Improvements

PROVO, UT, October 28, 2008 – Last Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008, the County of Los Angeles Public Library system received the “Best Application of Technology” award due to their implementation and use of SirsiDynix Symphony®, a full-featured integrated library solution that helps libraries succeed in serving their patrons.

SirsiDynix and the County of Los Angeles Public Library—a system with 85 libraries, approximately 14 million in circulation and over 7.5 million titles—succeeded in implementing Symphony on time and on budget with significant cost savings and greatly increased services and functionality.

Appropriately, the “Best Application of Technology” award recognizes the organization that most shows a significant service quality or productivity improvement from the use of recent technological advances. The award is bestowed by the Los Angeles County Quality and Productivity Commission.

The County library estimates their recent move to Symphony from DRA Classic has produced an annual cost savings of 1.5 million dollars. In addition, the library cites other benefits from their Symphony implementation, including:

 Greatly improved user experience and catalog searching
 Substantial gains in customer holds (the library experienced a tripling of holds after the Symphony implementation, indicating customer satisfaction with the new catalog’s ease of use and functionality)
 Enhanced content offerings, such as book covers, excerpts, reviews and author notes
 Staff proficiency through in-depth, customized training
 Robust functionality, including EDI X-12, 9xx, and Unicode support
 Extensive management reporting and statistical analysis tools with Directors Station™

Margaret Donnellan Todd, County Librarian, stated, “SirsiDynix partnered with the County throughout the process from system design through production. This large scale and complex implementation experience led by Fred Hungerford, Assistant Director and Migell Acosta, Systems Manager, with the help of SirsiDynix staff, was implemented on time and on budget. With extensive training of over 1,500 staff and excellent data migration, we enjoyed much better results than we had expected. Customers are enjoying the functionality and ease of use, and we are enjoying cost savings and the greatly improved management reporting tools.”

SirsiDynix’ Chief Executive Officer, Gary Rautenstrauch, said, “SirsiDynix strives to bring success to each library, and this award further demonstrates our commitment to offer functionality and services that contribute to each customer’s success. We couldn’t be more pleased for Los Angeles County Public Library and this ’Best Application of Technology’ honor.”

For a private demo or further information about SirsiDynix Symphony, feel free to contact a SirsiDynix sales professional at 1-800-288-8020, extension 1 or sales@sirsidynix.com.