Kingston University Purchases AquaBrowser Library
Bristol, UK, January 28, 2009. Infor, the exclusive distributor of AquaBrowser® Library in Great Britain and Republic of Ireland, today announced that Kingston University in South West London, UK, has purchased the AquaBrowser search and discovery platform by Medialab Solutions BV. The Kingston University Information Services will be implementing AquaBrowser at four Learning Resources Centres (libraries) on each of the main teaching campuses to provide users with improved access to more than 450,000 books and audiovisual materials.
AquaBrowser will interface directly with the library's Talis® AltoÔ library management system and Serials Solutions® 360 Search federated search application. In addition to AquaBrowser, Kingston University will also implement My Discoveries, adding a wealth of social features to the library catalog, including tagging, reviews, ratings, lists, and millions of tags from LibraryThing users.
Says Graham Bulpitt, Director of Information Services, Kingston University: “AquaBrowser will unlock the resources which are available to our students by bringing together a wide range of material through the single search box that they expect. It will breathe new life into our catalogue by presenting students with exciting discovery features such as word cloud and facet searching. With the addition of My Discoveries, our users can add value to the catalogue by contributing their own reviews, tags and lists.”
Kingston University is based in Kingston upon Thames, a busy riverside town in Surrey on the borders of London. The University has four campuses and serves more than 20,000 students in both undergraduate and postgraduate programs.
More information about the Kingston University libraries may be found at: http://www.kingston.ac.uk/library/index.html
About AquaBrowser
AquaBrowser's mission is to help the library play a central role in the provision and safeguarding of knowledge. AquaBrowser Library, the world leader in visual faceted searching, helps the library take centre stage by opening up all of its resources to the community. My Discoveries was created to take the next step: to give a role and a voice to the community, and to connect the people who create, organize and use the library's resources, inside and outside the library.
About Infor Library and Information Solutions
Infor Library and Information Solutions offers libraries and information centers a suite of automation products, including a web-based ILS (V-smart), a client/server ILS (Vubis Smart), a statistical analysis portal (V-insight), a federated search application (V-spaces), an Open URL Resolver (V-link), and an Electronic Resources Management System (V-sources). Our organization has been at the forefront of library technology for three decades and has a rich history of providing innovative solutions to information centers and libraries worldwide. For more information about our products, visit http://vubis-smart.com/
Kingston University
With more than 20,000 students, Kingston University is the largest provider of higher education in South West London, offering an extensive range of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes both in the United Kingdom and overseas. The University is renowned for teaching excellence, has established itself as a growing force in research and is widely respected as a pioneer in e-learning. In its most recent University guide, The Sunday Times praised Kingston's vocational courses for “standing students in good stead when it comes to getting jobs”. The guide also confirmed that no fewer than 15 of the University's subjects had been rated as excellent for teaching in official assessments.