June 22, 2007:  For Immediate Release

VTLS and VCOM Announce the OSTMED.DR® Digital Library

Blacksburg, VA – VTLS Inc. is pleased to announce a partnership with The Edward Via Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine (VCOM) to create a digital library dedicated to supporting the teaching, scholarship and research in osteopathic medicine. The digital library project is based on VTLS’ Institutional Repository product, VITAL, which is produced and hosted by the company.

The project, called OSTMED.DR®, contains citations to published literature in Osteopathic Medicine, and wherever possible, it contains the full text of articles and other publications. Three methods are used to create the full text contents and other digital objects for this repository:

First, born-digital objects and objects that have previously been digitized are simply cataloged with the relevant metadata and ingested into the repository.

Second, articles in journals and other publications for which the project has received permission are scanned and converted to PDF files and indexed for full text searching.  Historical materials also fall in this category. Metadata records are created for these articles before they are ingested into the repository. 

Third, owners of copyrighted journals are being contacted to see if selected articles from their materials can also be included in the repository.  A panel of experts has been formed to help select the articles to be included. A working version of the repository can be accessed from the VCOM web site at http://www.ostmed-dr.com.

The repository not only holds the information but also provides powerful user access features.  These features include: ability to retrieve the digital object from a laptop or desktop, full text indexing of all PDF documents, browsing by numerous indexes and special methods to highlight selected portions of the digital library.  The full contents of the repository may be viewed easily using faceted search techniques.
 
Access to OSTMED.DR is free of charge through August 2007. Starting in September 2007, access will be available only by subscription. Institutional and personal subscriptions will be available and details about the subscriptions will be announced soon.

“Digital access to this literature is so much more convenient than the printed versions,” said Dean Dixie Tooke-Rawlins. “In funding and managing this project, VCOM is helping create a very valuable resource for all the students and faculty in the various schools of Osteopathic Medicine. It is my hope that this resource will also be used by practitioners in the field”.  

“VCOM is showing great leadership in helping create this very valuable resource. We are proud to partner with VCOM and provide the underlying technology through VITAL” said Vinod Chachra, CEO of VTLS, “ In so doing, VCOM is paving the way for other similar institutions around the world.”

About VTLS Inc.

VTLS Inc. www.vtls.com, a leading library automation company in business for over 30 years, provides visionary technology in library solutions to a diverse customer base of more than 900 libraries in over 32 countries. Virtua is our premier ILS solution, Visualizer is our facet-based data discovery tool, Fastrac is our RFID technology, and we also provide cutting edge software and services for Digital Libraries with Digital Imaging and VITAL, our Repository Services solution. VTLS is one of the few ISO 9001:2000 quality certified companies within the library industry.