InterSystems supports University of Nairobi with Cach'e 4.0

InterSystems, leading supplier of high performance database systems, announces that has supported the University of Nairobi in their efforts to automate their library system. The Kenyan University can use InterSystems` flagship, Cach'e, in return of a symbolic amount. Cach'e 4.0, a post relational database with multidimensional data and application server is the core of library system VUBIS that was co-developed by the `Vrije Universiteit` Brussels (VUB) and the `Technische Universiteit` of Eindhoven and library system manufacturer Geac.

"The University of Nairobi had a traditional library system and was not automated. Awaiting a full fledged system the University started with the description of a small part (15,000) of the complete collection of 300,000 books", said Marc Verpoorten, Head Librarian of the Vrije Universiteit of Brussels and initiator of the project. "The University of Nairobi used a computer readable language and a simplified catalogue system that contained title, author, publisher and publishing date".

The project is part of the VLIR program for institutional university co-operation between the VUB, the co-ordinating institute and the University of Nairobi. The implementation face was completed extremely fast. The server was pre-configured in Brussels. Linux was installed as the operating system. Followed the installation of Cach'e 4.0 and the VUBIS application for library management. The parametisation of the library subsystem of VUBIS was done in Nairobi. Today it is the only part of the system that is operational. After finalising the description of every book in the library the book loan system of VUBIS will be activated. At this moment a team of 15 cataloguers are processing the data in main library. Step two of this operation is to process the data in the 10 departmental libraries as there are the medical and the science library. This will be more difficult because not all of the libraries are connected to the LAN.

"Processing the data is not as easy as we might think", according to Verpoorten. "The employees of the library do not have excellent typing skills. The Local Area Network (LAN) works perfectly, but the connection to the Internet could be improved a lot (256 Kbps for the entire University and down most of the time). Fortunately the LAN does its work (at the moment), so progress is still made."