Horizon Sunrise 7.0
Julian Critchfield, epixtech's chief technical officer, said: "Our development team has worked extremely hard on this new release along with the beta libraries. Intense work and late hours have gone into this release, both from our staff here at epixtech and from the libraries that have tested [it]. The beta sites have really enjoyed the hold suspension, where hold requests can be suspended for later reactivation, to accommodate patrons leaving on vacation. Z39.50 cataloging, which gives the library staff the ability to capture records from Z39.50 databases, has also been used enthusiastically. There are enhancements in all areas of Horizon Sunrise 7.0, but those in Cataloging and Circulation will improve the quality and speed of service for library patrons."

Lana Porter, president and CEO of epixtech, said: "We regularly hear from our customers about what they like and the improvements they would like to see in the future. It's very gratifying to meet their expectations with a new release. We love to hear from our beta libraries that everything has worked exactly as they anticipated it would. With this release we're right on the mark, both with features and with meeting our delivery schedule. I'm proud of the epixtech staff, and appreciative of our beta libraries and their staffs who have worked together so well to make this release such a success."
 

EILNET
Suzy Ricks, librarian at Eastern Idaho Technical College and the chair of EILNET, said: "We are really anticipating the Horizon Sunrise installation. We wrote a grant for a new automation system, but because we are a group of small libraries, we were afraid our funding wouldn't support a premier system. However, by using epixtech's application service provider, we were able to afford Horizon Sunrise, which was everything we wanted in a system. This will solve a lot of our technical problems and give us the technical expertise we need but couldn't necessarily afford otherwise. We'll have a Web interface, a union catalog approach that enables us to simultaneously search the catalogs of every library in our system rather than each small library one at a time. This will make interlibrary loans available easily and quickly. It also means our patrons will have 24/7 access to the libraries through the Web. The whole thing is everything we could hope for and more, all at an affordable price."

"It is very desirable to be able to deliver our Horizon Sunrise automation system via application service provider to a consortium such as EILNET, where they cover such a large geographical area and have such a great need," said Porter. "This consortium requires a system that allows their patrons to access their library from remote areas. Our application service provider is really by far the best answer to their problems. We're very proud that epixtech has been the industry leader in providing ASP solutions to libraries. Right now we serve more libraries through ASP sites than any other library automation vendor and many more installations are planned."

The Horizon Sunrise modules EILNET will be using include PAC, Cataloging, Circulation, iPac, Inventory, PC Reliance, and EasyAsk. Previously, libraries within the consortium used a variety of automation systems.

Source: epixtech, Inc., Provo, UT, 800/288-8020; http://www.epixtech.com.