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Eloquent
Systems ships WebLibrary to Caribbean
 The
Caribbean Sea covers a mere 970,000 square miles, but the islands and
nations of the Caribbean basin rank as one of the most diverse places in
the world. This territory features tropical rainforests, wide sweeps of
white sandy beaches, volcanoes, charming villages, and several large
cities. The region's political diversity is just as extreme including
everything from crown colonies to independent nations. The vibrant
culture reflects African, Dutch, English, French, and Spanish influences
- evident in everything from food to art to politics.
As diversified as this place is, global economic pressures are such that
these nations must be united in order to flourish. Founded in 1992, and
formed of fifteen different political entities, CARIFORUM is the result
of an international aid and trade agreement with the European
Commission. CARIFORUM's goals are to promote stability and economic
prosperity in this relatively tumultuous region. Recognizing that a
country's culture is an important asset, one of the areas of cooperation
is the founding and support of national libraries and museums.
In July of 2000, Merv Richter, President of Eloquent Systems of North
Vancouver, BC visited the jBASE Development office in Portland OR. The
Eloquent application was a DOS-based Advanced Revelation package for
Museum and Archive Management. Eloquent was finding that they were
severely limited in the marketplace while running on a 16-bit
environment plus they needed to make their application web enabled. In a
few hours with the jBASE technical folks, a tape was read, a few modules
of the Eloquent application had been converted, and Richter was
convinced.
The Eloquent developers went to work and had a shipping product in just
six months. WebLibrary is a state-of-the art 32-bit application built
with Eloquent's innovative WEBCAT application development software
utilizing powerful jBASE database engine technology. In February of
2001, the jBASE version of Eloquent WebLibrary, the world's first
entirely web-centric integrated library management application, began
shipment.
This was a perfect fit for the CARIFORUM's requirements, and shortly
thereafter, they bought the application running on jBASE as part of an
extensive project to web enable 15 Caribbean national libraries
providing the cataloguing and research components.
The software has a common authority file pre-loaded with most of the
authorized terms for the entire region, terms that were compiled by a
Trinidad-based library consultant working on the project. The Eloquent
WebLibrary supports the various "see" and "see also" relationships to
ensure that the authorized terms are automatically used during the
cataloguing process. It also ensures that the researcher will find all
the appropriate material even if they use the wrong term. Much of the
unique ability to structure data for easy retrieval and presentation is
based on WEBCAT's use of jBASE.
Since all functions of the Eloquent WebLibrary software are web-enabled
it will be easy for the national libraries to do the cataloguing of
holdings in several locations, as long as they have Internet connection
to their WebLibrary server. That same server will support search access
from anywhere in the world when the project is completed. Nothing needs
to be published to a web site. Everything is live. Being truly
integrated with Web technology, WebLibrary opens all sorts of
possibilities for library and information systems.
"What really captured our interest in Eloquent was their ability to
deliver the three applications we will require for this cultural
project: library, museum, and archives. They are all developed with
WEBCAT which is Web/Email/Internet-enabled and entirely 32-bit," said
Rajendra Singh, the data systems consultant for the project. "It will
also give us the ability to provide simultaneous user interface to users
with different language preferences."
Eloquent Systems Inc is a private company incorporated in British
Columbia, Canada over 25 years ago and since then has been developing,
installing and supporting archives, library, museum and records
management software for customers all over the world. Summarized by
Richter, "I am very pleased with the CARIFORUM installation. It came
just in time for the new version of the product. CARIFORUM will be
getting the latest multi-dimensional database technology from jBASE and
the intuitive Web user interface of WebLibrary. As a packaged product it
will be easy for us to support and upgrade."
For more information about the product please visit the web site at
www.eloquent-systems.com |
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