ITS•International
ITS•International utilizes Unicode technology and features a built-in transliteration table that processes characters entered in a wide variety of native scripts and then automatically generates the corresponding romanized text. Of particular note, librarians will be able to use ITS•International to transliterate Chinese, Japanese, and Korean to romanized text so that users of older software can effectively retrieve and display information in the library catalog. The program can also catalog Web sites as if they were books.

"In the 21st century," said Annette Bakhtiar, TLC's CEO, "library tools must truly be global and reach beyond the boundaries of country and language. We believe ITS•International is the first product of its type to effectively bridge the language divide and make the use of MARC records global."

Additional features of ITS•International include an integrated Web browser that enables users to toggle between functions without opening and closing applications. "By eliminating time-consuming cut-and-paste operations, librarians and catalogers will improve their efficiency," said Bakhtiar. "Another way in which TLC programmers have made cataloging MARC records more accessible was to incorporate icons, rather than text, wherever possible. That's faster, simpler, and more global."

ITS•International takes advantage of Unicode, a universal standard for information exchange designed to support all the world's languages. The Library of Congress, OCLC, and other library automation vendors are in various stages of implementing Unicode software features. To support Unicode functionality, ITS•International must be installed on Windows 2000. The product also runs effectively on Windows NT if the user has a third-party Input Method Editor.
 

ITS•forWindows 3.36
According to the announcement, ITS•forWindows 3.36 is fully compatible with updated Library of Congress Control Numbers (LCCN) and provides expanded, new print capabilities. Bakhtiar said: "ITS•forWindows 3.36 permits librarians to quickly recover from a printer jam when printing cards, labels, or edit sheets. This particular capability further differentiates our product from would-be competitors, many of which don't even provide a print function."

Another enhancement to ITS•forWindows 3.36 is the addition of default extensions to the list of recognized file types. "Users no longer have to key in nonstandard extensions when opening or saving MARC records, which is a real timesaver for busy librarians," said Bakhtiar. Additional features of ITS•forWindows 3.36 include a safety measure that protects against accidental erasure of MARC record batches from the Internet queue, the option to print MARC record edit sheets in single-spacing mode, and improved options in the utility menu.

Initially introduced in 1995, ITS•forWindows enables users to do the following:

• Browse hundreds of Z39.50 resources on the Internet
• Download records into a powerful MARC editor
• Analyze MARC files from book vendors
• Validate a record's compliance with MARC or OCLC rules
• Verify headings against a local authority file the user can control
• Automate repetitive tasks through a powerful macro scripting language
• Copy and paste information from one record to another
• Access approximately 15 million MARC records on TLC's ITS•MARC and ITS•MARC-Z servers.