From our Managing Director
Dear Customer,
On the 27th of January the City of Paris Library Network went live with its V-smart system. The implementation process was quite intense in the last days before the go-live event with staff from both our organization and the Library Network working hard to meet the necessary deadline. The result however was a successful go-live on January 27th, as planned. Likewise, we enjoyed additional success in North America; the East Baton Rouge Parish Library System in Louisiana, U.S.A., selected V-smart as its next generation library system. And in Canada the Bradford West Gwillimbury Public Library chose V-smart after diligently evaluating alternative systems in an open tender.
Besides sales in North America, the National Library of Aruba also selected us through our Dutch operations. The implementation will take place in the coming weeks: we expect that it won't be difficult to find consultants who are willing to make a trip to this beautiful island in the Caribbean!
Also in January I attended the American Library Association's winter conference in Denver in the United States. I had the opportunity to meet with customers and industry analysts and discuss our perspective on the market and prevalent technological trends. I emphasized our current development efforts, which focus on the creation of a new online experience for library users and improved ways for libraries to attract and retain a highly savvy web audience. This theme was also echoed in our presentations at the Dutch user group meeting in February; through solutions for usage analysis, customer relationship management and an engaging online environment, we now place the “the user” squarely at the center of our development approach.
With winter behind us, the spring spirit of growth and renewal is evident. We will release new versions of V-link and V-insight in the first months of 2009. We will also continue our drive to innovate as we release V-smart version 2.0 and Vubis Smart 3.0 in the summer, and carry on the development of our new online user platform.
In this newsletter you may read more about interesting projects at various customer libraries. The Kingston Frontenac Public Library in Canada won a noteworthy award together with the Toronto and Hamilton public libraries for the ‘Ontario Time Machine' project. In Belgium, users of the Turnhout Public Library can now listen to music in the library's collection through an exciting implementation of V-link, Infor's OpenURL Resolver. And Eric Conderaerts, Director of Product Management, sheds more light on the need for CRM within libraries.
I look forward to hearing from you with any questions or suggestions, and wish you happy reading!
Sincerely,
Ann Melaerts
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