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| PRESS RELEASE November 11th, 2004 |
Colorado School of Mines Joins The Prospector System
(Denver, CO) On November 11, 2004, with a ceremony in the Boettcher Room of the Arthur Lakes Library, the Colorado School of Mines officially became a participating member of Prospector, an electronically unified library catalog serving 22 academic, public and special libraries in Colorado. Through Prospector, CSM now has access to the over 17 million books, journals, sound recordings, films, videotapes held in these libraries. Without the assistance of a librarian and with a single click, CSM students and faculty can identify and borrow desired items and have them delivered to the CSM Library within days. Adding CSM to the Prospector System was a particularly daunting task. Prospector was built on proprietary software developed by Innovative Interfaces Inc, a major automated library systems developer. Voyager, the automated library system used by CSM, was developed by Endeavor Information Systems using different proprietary software. A condition of the CSM-Endeavor contract was that Endeavor would build an electronic bridge between the two systems. That now has been accomplished and the November 11, 2004 ceremony celebrates that significant achievement. Despite III and Endeavor being active competitors in the academic marketplace, both companies working diligently with CSM and Prospector’s sponsor, the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries, to realize that very difficult goal. Joni Lerud-Heck, Director of the CSM library, acknowledged the difficult challenges faced and overcome by the participants in this unique undertaking. She stated that “although the work was replete with unexpected problems and took considerably longer than planned, I am pleased that this day has finally come and the CSM family now has access to the rich resources of our Prospector partners, which includes the collections at Colorado University, Colorado State University and other major institutions. Verne Coppi, Director of Development at Endeavor participated in the ceremony and he too reflected the great satisfaction felt by all. In a particularly upbeat moment, Coppi stated that “I am going to dance and celebrate” and predicted “ that the reciprocal borrowing function will be heavily used. In sending his regrets for being unable to attend the celebration, Roland Dietz, CEO of Endeavor stated that “I am glad to see that we have accomplished success in this extremely difficult task of creating bridges between different vendor systems”. For more information contact:
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