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November 29, 2005:  For Immediate Release

VTLS Announces VITAL 2.0 Implementations

Blacksburg, VA - VTLS Inc. is pleased to announce the availability and delivery of VITAL 2.0. VITAL is used by institutional repositories to manage their digital collections. The Australian Research Repositories Online to the World (ARROW) Project, led by Monash University has just completed the acceptance testing of VITAL 2.0. This acceptance of VITAL 2.0 paves the way for the software to be installed at Monash University, University of New South Wales, National Library of Australia and Swinburne University. These installations are in progress. Other Australian universities are negotiating to acquire and install the software early in 2006.

VITAL 2.0 has been enhanced to provide the following functionality:

1. Web Submission - open-source web tools allow faculty and others to contribute metadata and datastreams that make up digital theses and dissertations. They may be submitted directly to the repository, or to an intermediary for review prior to ingestion into the repository. An expansion of this model including a range of additional resource types has been developed and is currently being tested.
2. Google™ Exposure - facilitates the discovery of VITAL resources by the larger Internet community. The VITAL indexing module provides a means to 'publish' summaries of Fedora repository content for harvesting by Web search engines.
3. Audio Support - Provide for the ingestion of audio files (wav, mp3) including metadata extraction to Fedora using VITAL.
4. Video Support - Provide for the ingestion of video format (avi, mpeg) including metadata extraction and frame extraction to Fedora using VITAL.
5. Metadata Extraction Web Service - As a first step to preservation, provides a Validation/Extraction Web Service interface to JSTOR/Harvard Object Validation Environment (JHOVE) and VTLS' TIFF extraction service.
6. Metadata Transform Web Service - allows data entered by content authors in MARCXML or ETD-MS to Dublin Core. Other crosswalks may be implemented.
7. Document Navigator - allows for viewing of multi page documents in PDF.
8. Batch Process - allows system administrators to ingest larger quantities of content into the VITAL repository via command-line tools and XML-based configuration files.
9. Fedora 2.0 Integration - updates VITAL to support new or changed features in Fedora 2.0.
10. Language Support - supports the display of Arabic and Hebrew text with right-to-left directionality.

"VITAL 2.0 continues the track record of VITAL representing the leading edge of repository thinking and offerings," said Carl Grant, President and COO of VTLS. "This is a direct result of our dedication to working closely with the ARROW Partners to define the state-of-the-art solution."

Other VITAL customers include National Libraries (National Library of Wales and Slovak National Library), universities (Princeton University, University of Delaware) and research organizations (Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research.)

VTLS Inc. (www.vtls.com) is a leading global company that creates and provides visionary technology in library solutions. We have three distinct divisions that serve a diverse customer base of more than 900 libraries in over 35 countries. Our VIRTUA division remains focused on ILS solutions. Our VTRAX division focuses on RFID technologies through a partnership with Tagsys and FKI Logistex. Our Digital Asset Creation & Management division provides cutting edge software and services for Digital Libraries. VTLS is also one of the few ISO 9001 quality certified companies within the library industry.