VTLS INC.: The company, the products, the services, the vision
| Date | 01 February 1993 |
| Pages | 7-36 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb047881 |
| Published date | 01 February 1993 |
| Author | Vinod Chachra,Gail Gulbenkian,Elaine Hartman,Sandeep Somaiya,Antti Soini,Bil Stahl,Claudia V. Weston |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
VTLS
INC.:
THE
COMPANY,
THE PRODUCTS, THE SERVICES, THE VISION
Vinod Chachra and Gail Gulbenkian
with contributions by Elaine Hartman, Sandeep Somaiya,
Antti Soini, Bil Stahl, Claudia V. Weston,
and staff of the West Virginia Library Commission
Today, VTLS is a comprehensive, integrated
solution to the automation requirements of
academic, public, and special libraries around
the world. No two libraries are alike; no two
regions are alike. VTLS recognizes these
differences and offers libraries the flexibility of
numerous options to configure the system that
best meets their functional and financial needs.
Sidebar 1: National Libraries, Special Libraries, and
VTLS
Sidebar 2: Binary Tree Structure vs. Superchains
Sidebar 3: The VTLS InfoStotion: A Hypermedia
Information Access and Authoring System for
Library Automation
Sidebar 4: CAVALIR ONLINE: A New Stole
Bibliographic Union Catalog for Virginia
Sidebar 5: The Finnish National Information Network
for Libraries
Sidebar
6:
West Virginia Library Commission and VTLS
Inc.
Sidebar
7:
National Agricultural Library Works toward
Producing AGRICOLA through VTLS
Sidebar 8: Co-Development Activities between VTLS
Inc.
and the University of North Carolina at
Charlotte
Sidebar 9: The VTLS Multimedia OPAC for Virtual
Libraries
Introduction
VTLS library automation software is the product
of
19
years of research and development. Even though
the R&D
process has been an evolutionary
one,
changes
in the system have been revolutionary. Today, the
VTLS OPAC, using client-server technology, can
provide worldwide access to multimedia information
including stereophonic sound, color images, and full-
motion
video.
VTLS has 18 different subsystems that
are based on national and international standards
providing access to
a
variety of databases in
16
differ-
ent languages and several different character
sets.
Now
in its nineteenth major release, VTLS has indeed
evolved far beyond its original capacities as a Circula-
tion
and
Finding System
(CFS).
Today, it
is
a compre-
hensive, integrated solution to the automation require-
ments
of academic, public, and special libraries around
the world. No two libraries are alike; no two regions
are
alike.
VTLS recognizes these differences and offers
libraries the flexibility of
numerous
options to configure
the system that best
meets
their functional
and
financial
needs.
The organization of VTLS evolved along with its
software. What started as a small development project
within the software development group at Virginia Tech
soon became a library project and then a university
project. The Center for Library Automation
was
formed
in 1983 to meet the growing needs of
the
users of the
VTLS system. As these
needs
grew, new demands were
placed on the organization. In
1985,
in order
to
provide
greater flexibility of operations, particularly in the
hiring of
new
employees and the procurement of
new
equipment,
a
spinoff corporation called
VTLS
Inc.
was
formed. VTLS Inc. is a for-profit Virginia stock
corporation.
Chachra
is
president and Gulbenkian is information
officer, VTLS Inc., Blacksburg, Virginia. Portions of this
article are revisions of prior work by various staff
members of VTLS Inc.
- VTLS INC - ISSUE 42 — 11:2 (1993) 7
The growth and outreach of VTLS Inc. as a
company
have
paralleled the growth and development
of its library automation software
products
and services.
From its initial handful of employees in 1985, the
company
has
grown
to
a staff of
70.
Its more than 240
customers can be found in 18 countries. In addition
to
the home office in Blacksburg, Virginia,
and
several
sales offices across the United States, the company
owns
subsidiaries in
Helsinki,
Finland, and Barcelona,
Spain. Further, Australia, Kuwait, Malaysia, Switzer-
land, and Thailand host
VTLS
agents and distributors.
This article offers
an
overview of
VTLS
Inc.—its
history, products, services, special interests, clients,
and vision for the future.
HISTORY
OF VTLS DEVELOPMENT
Beginnings
VTLS Inc. is the offspring of
a
project launched
in 1974 at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University, popularly known
as
Virginia Tech.
At
that
time,
a library automation vendor was proposing a
library system
to
Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech and the
vendor could not come to any satisfactory agreement
for the procurement. Having explored available library
automation alternatives, and having found no other
system suitable for the needs of its libraries, Virginia
Tech initiated a development project to create an
automated library system. The resulting Circulation
and Finding System (CFS) consisted of
an
OPAC and
automated circulation system. CFS was installed at
Virginia Tech's Newman Library in September 1975.
The Newman Library is a member of the Association
of Research Libraries with more than 1.75 million
cataloged volumes (see figure 1).
CFS
was developed
to
run under
the MPE
operat-
ing
system on
the
Hewlett-Packard 3000 Series/Model
I computer (with 128k memory) and used the
award-winning IMAGE database management system.
The system at that time could handle only a restricted
number
and
size of
databases;
diskstorage was relative-
ly expensive; and automatic transaction logging was
not available. These factors were taken into consider-
ation in the design tradeoffs of
CFS.
Sophisticated for
its
time,
CFS was a comprehensive system that support-
ed
author,
title,
author/title,
and call
number searching.
To conserve disk space, the software was based on
short
records
and featured
a
special logging subsystem
to ensure data integrity and security.
Designing for the Difficult and Exceptional
From
1977 to
1979, CFS
was
tested,
revised, and
expanded to include serials holdings records. During
this period, a concept arose that continues to guide
VTLS
development today: software designed to handle
the difficult and the exceptional will handle the rest
with ease. In terms of the project involving serials
holdings records, the concept meant "monographs are
a special case of serials" (i.e., if the software is
designed
to
accommodate
serials,
monographs will take
care of themselves).
Valuing the Data
The CFS system was based on short records and
had limited growth
potential.
Enough
was
learned from
the experience of designing
and
implementing
CFS
that
it became obvious a new and open design structure
based on full MARC records was needed to support
the
growing
needs
of library
users.
The design of CFS
was cast aside in favor of
a
new design and was given
the new name of
VTLS.
Also
at this
point,
VTLS made
a commitment to provide conversion programs for the
users of the
CFS
system
to
easily migrate
all
their data
to
the new
system.
Nineteen major releases later, VTLS
still provides the capabilities to migrate all the data
from older
VTLS
systems to the newer ones and from
other systems to VTLS.
By
1980,
VTLS had gained substantial experience
in handling fugitive formats and migrating data from
these
formats
to
standard
MARC
formats.
This
experi-
ence led to yet another philosophy, which maintains
that
a
system's data are more valuable than a system's
hardware and software. Both the hardware and
the
soft-
8 LIBRARY HI TECH —VINOD CHACHRA
AND
GAIL
GULBENKIAN
—
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