Communal Catalog and Other Major Features Delivered To All Customers

Austin, Texas – March 10, 2009
Biblionix today announced significant enhancements to its Apollo hosted automation service. These enhancements broaden community access and patron experiences as well as put more powerful tools in the hands of library staff. They are immediately available to all customers, free of charge, and with no software installation required. These enhancements include:

VersaCat™ and Z39.50 Communal Public Catalog Capability
Apollo now provides an optional Z39.50 public catalog sharing capability that lets a library’s public catalog be searched and the results displayed by other libraries. And a library can integrate other Apollo libraries’ search results into its own with Apollo’s VersaCat capability. VersaCat has been in use for months and blends other search results seamlessly into the standard Apollo catalog interface. These combined features allow groups of libraries to provide a Communal Public Catalog that broadens the search and discovery experiences of all patrons. Future VersaCat enhancements will extend the Communal Public Catalog approach while maintaining libraries’ autonomy.

CSS Customization for maximum OPAC flexibility
Apollo now allows for CSS based customization of the public catalog. Experienced webmasters can now tailor the Apollo catalog to match the look and feel of the library’s own website.

Branch Support
Libraries with multiple branches can now take advantage of Apollo. Floating collections are supported as well as complete item transfer capability.

Merchandizing Support
For libraries that want to “Dump Dewey” and offer a merchandizing or bookstore approach, Apollo now offers the answer. Apollo’s implementation at the Anna Porter Public Library in Gatlinburg, Tennessee will be featured in the pre-conference of the Association for Rural and Small Libraries. The conference will be in Gatlinburg on September 10-13, 2009.

Booklists
Apollo Recommended Reading lists are viewed by patrons in normal catalog search results, keeping familiarity and ease of use paramount. Multiple lists can be created, edited, and published at will.

Material Batch Edit
Providing enormous power to manage a collection, Apollo’s new Batch Edit capability is now available. Changing or adding attributes en masse, like Call Numbers and material types, can help keep a collection in optimal form with a minimum of tedium and time.

Geographic Redundancy
Apollo servers are located in Tier 1 Internet Data Facilities for reliability and high performance. These installations are now linked in a live, hot, redundant architecture across different geographic locations. Data is always current on all servers. In the case where one server is inoperable, another is instantly ready to take up the load with no data loss. Combined with transaction recording and backups in yet another geographically redundant arrangement, preservation of our customers’ data and associated uptime is unmatched.
Note that there is only a single version of Apollo. All users are always operating on the same version. This avoids confusing version numbers and the uncertainty of whether or not a library is using the latest version.

“In my 20+ years in libraries, switching to Apollo is one of the smartest choices I have made,” said Kim Earnest, Director of the Mediapolis Public Library in Mediapolis, Iowa.