Oxford libraries choose VTLS

Oxford University Library Services (OULS) has signed US company VTLS to supply its Virtua library management system, in a breakthrough deal for VTLS as it enters the competitive UK library automation market.

OULS is the largest university library service in the UK, with 700 staff at 80 libraries, including the Bodleian legal deposit library.

The new library management system will handle acquisitions, cataloguing, OPAC, non-Roman scripts, circulation, serials and automated stack requests and will support an average of 9,000 closed-stack delivery requests every week. Inter-library loan and warehouse management interfaces will be added later.

OULS holds about 15 million items. Initially, the system will manage 5.4 million bibliographic records associated with 8.7 million items.

OULS selected the Virtua system after a tendering process involving seven would-be suppliers. Ronald Milne, acting director of OULS, told IWR that VTLS was chosen because it is committed to open source-based products, allowing Oxford to expand the system’s functionality in future.

The system will be implemented as Oxford brings 80 libraries under the single umbrella of OULS. It plans to spend an extra £1 million a year on electronic resources and build a robot-retrieved storage facility.

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