INNOPAC innovates?
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb040543 |
| Published date | 01 March 1994 |
| Date | 01 March 1994 |
| Pages | 30-39 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
INNOPAC innovates?
With the opening of a UK office in 1993,
INNOPAC is one of the latest US library
systems to hit the European market.
Originally launched in 1985, it has now
infiltrated several continents, mainly in the
academic and research library
sector.
INNOPAC offers the full range of standard
library management modules, plus some
more advanced networked information
services features.
Background
Innovative Interfaces Inc is based in Berkeley,
California. The company was founded in 1978 and
first developed an OCLC-CLSI Interface. In 1981
the INNOVACQ software appeared; this provided
acquisitions and serials control and could operate
either stand-alone or in conjunction with modules
from other suppliers or developed in-house.
Finally the complete INNOPAC system was
introduced in 1985. Innovative is now devoted to
supplying its own integrated library automation
package, INNOPAC, and related add-on products.
INNOPAC's most innovative feature is probably
the extent of facilities for interfacing (as if to
justify their name...) with external systems and
services, principally across the Internet. These
include gateways, Z39.50 client/server, email and
EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) facilities.
Worldwide
There are now around 390 libraries using
INNOPAC in nine countries — Australia, Canada,
Hong Kong, Italy, New Zealand, Taiwan, Thailand,
United Kingdom and the United States. The majori-
ty of these are university and college libraries.
Europe
The first European site for INNOPAC was the
European University Institute in Florence, which
installed the system in 1993. Unusually, the
University is supported remotely from the United
States, entirely over the Internet; almost all other
INNOPAC users are also supported in this way.
A UK office was opened in July 1993 and the first
UK contract was signed in February 1994; this was
strangely enough a joint system for the University
of Wales in Bangor and the North East Wales
Institute of Higher Education in Wrexham. Despite
being 70 miles apart, the two independent institu-
tions are sharing a database of over 300,000
records. The system includes a bilingual English-
Welsh OPAC.
The next UK taker was Essex University, who
replaced the now defunct Teralib software with
INNOPAC. This system went live in August 1994;
already their OPAC can be consulted via the
Internet using Access, Essex University's Gopher.
Hardware/operating platform
INNOPAC is written in C and was designed from
the beginning to run under the Unix operating
system. It is based on a client-server model.
The system runs on all the major Unix hardware
platforms including IBM, DEC, HP, MIPS and
SUN. Innovative Interfaces has agreements with a
number of hardware manufacturers, so is able to
provide turnkey solutions if required. Alternative-
ly, software only can be supplied.
Cataloguing
Structure
INNOPAC supports the ALA, the Chinese, Japa-
nese and Korean (CJK) and the Thai character sets.
The system does not store records in MARC
format internally, but cataloguing is usually
carried out using MARC tags; alternatively, named
field labels can be used if preferred.
It is up to the library to decide which fields (in the
chosen format) should appear as prompts for the
cataloguer and which should be suppressed. Up to
100 separate templates (for eg monographs,
serials, audio-visual items) can be set up, accord-
ing to the library's needs.
Fields are a mixture of fixed (or 'coded') and
variable length. The variable length fields only,
can be repeated as many times as required. The
library can also select which fields are to be
indexed. This includes the abstract field, which
can be automatically keyword indexed if required.
30 —
VINE
96
(September 1994)
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