ALEPH 500 at King's College London
| Date | 01 February 1999 |
| Published date | 01 February 1999 |
| Pages | 39-56 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb040718 |
| Author | Peter Sudell,Margaret Robinson |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
ALEPH 500 at King's
College London
by Peter Sudell and Margaret
Robinson, Kings College, London
The article starts by describing the
procurement process for a Library
Management System at Kings College,
London. The library chose Aleph 500 (version
11.4),
the system and the implementation
process at KCL are described.
Library Management System -
the procurement
King's College London had been using the SLS
LIBERTAS library management system, for
almost a decade from 1987, and had implemented
all modules apart from serials. The KCL
LIBERTAS system also provided services for the
libraries of the United Medical and Dental School,
King's College School of Medicine and Dentistry,
the Institute of Psychiatry and the Courtauld Inst.
of Art Library (the two latter transferring to the
KCL system from the ULL system.)
We knew in 1996 that LIBERTAS was to be
upgraded to a new system and support for
LIBERTAS discontinued, (and, later, in the light
of
the
take-over of
SLS
by Innovative this was a
wise move). A small working group from KCL
Library and Computing Centre was established in
autumn 1996 to review the library systems market,
and to establish what major library systems suppli-
ers could provide at the time and what they would
have to offer in the next three to four years. The
group visited a number of other major libraries in
the UK to look at systems-eg GEAC ADVANCE,
BLCMP TALIS, INNOPAC, and members had
also attended system vendor presentations for these
and other systems (DS, CAIRS etc). The main
recommendation to emerge from the report was
that the College should undertake a procurement
exercise for a new library management system that
would offer enhanced facilities and run to industry
standards.
A steering group was set up in late spring of 1997;
Mr Johan van Halm, a consultant specialising in
library management systems was engaged to
advise and provide technical expertise, and the
College went out to European tender under the
restricted procedure in mid-July
1997.
KCL had
been very lucky to be able to visit Southampton
University Library shortly after they had begun
implementation of Unicorn, and we were able to
use their operational requirements document as
a basis for our own, and also to glean much
useful advice on implementation. Similarly we
used some of LSE's experience in changing from
LIBERTAS.
Once the responses to the College's operational
requirement were received an initial shortlist was
drawn up, a few further library site visits made and
then a final very short-list was decided upon. The
remaining suppliers were then invited to give
presentations on their systems to staff and library
users at King's during a three week period strad-
dling November/December. (We had available in
the Library a large training/meeting room with
network connections.) Following the presentations,
a final short-list of two companies was drawn up,
clarification on a number of points was sought and
both companies' offices were visited. At a meet-
ing in early January, the system procurement
steering group came to the conclusion that Aleph
500,
marketed by Ex Libris, was the most appro-
priate system for King's and its client libraries. It
has to be said that the ExLibris presentation was
not only the most comprehensive and detailed, but
also the most demanding, as a far greater amount
of factual information was demonstrated on a live
database connection to Israel.
Final negotiations early in 1998 ensured that, as
the first UK site, we would receive a high level of
training and support during the implementation.
This included training the EXL staff at King's for
2 weeks out of each month from late May through
to September, with an implementation date of
1st
September, and a contractual obligation to provide
a UK compliant ILL system, and a short loan
booking system.
ALEPH 500 itself
Aleph 500 is a state-of-the-art client-server system,
with an architecture, which will allow it to take on
new developments in IT with relative ease. Being
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ALEPH 500 at King's College London
a new system, it should have a life of at least ten
years.
It embraces industry standards, and runs on
an Oracle relational database management system,
with Windows interfaces for staff client modules,
and Web interface for the Online Public Access
Catalogue. It offers seamless connectivity to other
electronic resources such as electronic journals,
external bibliographic databases, materials held on
CD-ROM, and images as well as having the ability
to execute parallel searches on databases (includ-
ing library catalogues) held on other
Z39.50-compliant systems, and of course offers
Z39.50 searches to other systems. It does not offer
a menu-based option that runs on dumb terminals
(telnet).
ALEPH is a generalised, fully integrated
system, based on parameter tables that allows
on-site tailoring of the system to specific applica-
tions.
ALEPH has a number of 'databases', one for
bibliographic, one for authority records, one for
administrative data including items, users, acquisi-
tions and serials data, one for holdings and one
for inter-lending. An ALEPH system can be set
up with multiples of any of these, depending on
the way the library or libraries are organised.
Each system comes complete with a set of
dummy or template databases, complete with
default tables, and the set-up of each can be
copied to the live local databases and amended as
required.
This article is based on our implementation at
Kings of version ALEPH 500 11.4, a slightly
newer version ALEPH 500 12.2 is to be used at the
Universities of Bristol and Westminster.
Network installation
During the Spring and Summer of 1998, the
Computer Centre organised the installation of
the new network and data connections to support
the PC's for the staff and the OPAC's, and PC's
were delivered, set up and installed at all sites.
This was a very large-scale operation, employing
two staff for around 6 weeks. KCL library and
computing staff had considered the merits of PC's
versus 'network computers' (as used at the Univer-
sity of North London) for OPAC's, but in the
interests of standardization, PC's were decided
upon.
Hardware installation
The Sun Enterprise UE3000 computer was in-
stalled during March 1998 and installation of the
software began almost immediately.
System conversion
It was decided that only bibliographic and item
data would be converted, as well as user data. No
circulation or acquisitions data was converted.
From September 1998, all new circulation (issues,
reservations) was done on ALEPH, and the change
to ALEPH acquisitions was used to start afresh
with new supplier data. If conversion had been
done, we would have expected a need to edit every
supplier record and budget anyway.
Bibliographic conversion
KCL LIBERTAS had its catalogue records in
UKMARC format, with most records having
LCSH subject headings and using LC Name
Authority. Classification at KCL was mostly by
Library of Congress, but the Libraries at Kensing-
ton used Dewey and those at Cornwall House and
Chelsea used UDC, while UMDS used NLM and
KCSMD and IOP used Barnard. A crash pro-
gramme (using mostly contract staff), to reclassify
to LC/NLM was started well before the system
changeover, as the sites at Kensington, and Chel-
sea were closing and their stock was moving in
Summer 1999, partly to Cornwall House at Water-
loo and partly to a new Information Centre at
London Bridge.
The decision was made to convert catalogue
records to USMARC format as part of the data
conversion to ALEPH. This has enabled us to
import records, using Z3950, from OCLC and
RLIN, without any additional conversion. CURL
records in UK format can be imported, but do have
to be edited (although a 'fix' routine is available
that does the bulk of the conversion to USMARC).
As KCL was the first LIBERTAS system to be
converted to ALEPH 500 and the first time
ExLibris staff had had to deal with UKMARC, we
undertook to write a conversion specification for
LIBERTAS UKMARC to USMARC. This speci-
fication has subsequently been used for other
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