Endeavor: integrated access to information regardless of its location or format
| Pages | 64-67 |
| Date | 01 June 2001 |
| Published date | 01 June 2001 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/03055720010804041 |
| Author | Andrew Cox |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
64 — VINE 123
Library Management System -
Supplier Profile
Endeavor: integrated
access to information
regardless of its
location or format
by Andrew Cox, LITC, South Bank
University
Endeavor Information Systems, now wholly
owned subsidia ries of Elsevier Scienc e Inc,
are relative newc omers to the Library
Management Sys tem market with Voyager
targeted at academic and research libraries.
An impressi ve customer list (of over 750)
includes the Library of Congress, the libraries
of Finland, and in the UK the University of
Hertfordshire, mu ch of the Universi ty of Wales,
National Library of Scotland and new
customer Cam bridge University . A fully
functional integrated library system , Voyager
can be extended to integ rate MARC
catalogued bibliographic databases (ci tation
server) and to man age digitisation projects
and integrate imag es with the OPAC (image
server). Their latest, standalone product
ENCompas s seeks to integrate digital mate rial
catalogued to any metadata standard.
This article is based on an interview with
Cindy Edgington Miller, Endeavor’s Dir ector of
the Digital Library Division.
Cindy Miller
Five former employees of Ameritech-Notis with
venture capital founded Endeavor in 1994. The
new company set out to create the first LMS based
on a ‘multi-tiered client-server system’, with
Oracle as a Relational Database Management
System. This meant it was a technological leap
ahead, with other LMS vendors migrating from
older architectures and non-industry standard
RDMS.
One of the founding members was Cindy Miller.
Cindy is a librarian. Jokingly she describes
herself as a semi-retired music cataloguer. After a
long career in academic libraries, from 1984 she
worked for several of the LMS vendors, including
NOTIS Horizon, where she was the principal
systems architect. Former Director of Product
Strategy at Endeavor (with a role in marketing,
product management, conferences & as a part time
systems developer), she is now head of the Digital
Library Division which is responsible for Linking
and the new standalone integration tool
ENCompass.
Elsevier
In April 2000 Endeavor were bought by Elsevier,
the publishing giants. Cindy stoutly defends the
merger, acknowledging some bad press. As a board
member she had to believe in the merger from the
start. There is synergy, she believes; it is a partner-
ship. Unquestionably Endeavor have had a lot
more development resources than they would have
had without Elsevier. They provided much of the
resource to develop ENCompass for example. The
total number of development staff at Endeavor
nearly doubled during 2000. It has been useful to
Endeavor to have insiders on publishing initiatives
like openURL and CrossRef. An immediate win
was Web Editions, which offered integration of
Elsevier electronic content into Voyager. But
Cindy is quick to stress that Voyager is a pub-
lisher-neutral system.
The core market
Voyager has a very focussed marketing/product
strategy. They are quite clear that their customers
are acad emic a nd resear ch l ibraries, rather than
public libraries or corporate libraries. They have
public library customers, generally part of large
consortia. Public libraries can use the system. But
the target market is th e LMS for academ ic and
research libraries world-wide.
As the LMS becomes more and more a system for
managing all sorts of electronic content, there is a
convergence with knowledge management, content
management, document management systems and
portal technology. But Endeavor is focussed on
the library market. It is a market they know,
with whom they share values about how to organ-
ise information. And they believe they offer
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