AARLIN (Australian Academic Research Library Network) was a successful Australian project to develop "a national virtual research library system that will provide unmediated, personalized and seamless end-user access to the collections and resources of Australian libraries and document delivery services" and the federated search service and consortium that was the project outcome. It ceased operation at the end of 2010.

History

In late 1999, the AARLIN project, led by

La Trobe University La Trobe University is a public university, public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia. Its main campus is located in the suburb of Bundoora, Victoria, Bundoora. The university was established in 1 ...

, was funded by an

Australian Research Council The Australian Research Council (ARC) is the primary non-medical research funding agency of the Australian Government, distributing more than in grants each year. The Council was established by the ''Australian Research Council Act 2001'', ...

(ARC) grant of $250,000 through its ''Research Infrastructure Equipment and Facilities Scheme'' (RIEFS). An additional $150,000 was contributed by the

National Library of Australia The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "mainta ...

and nineteen Australian university libraries. The service continued operation until December 2010, with members choosing to operate the new generation of pre-indexed library search systems in house or as vendor hosted solutions.

Pilot

Six Australian university libraries were involved in the pilot phase in 2001 and 2002: * Flinders University * Murdoch University * La Trobe University * Swinburne University * University of Canberra * Victoria University of Technology

Operational phase

The AARLIN Project received $2.8 million from the

DEST German Earth and Stone Works (, ) was an SS-owned company created to procure and manufacture building materials for state construction projects in Nazi Germany. DEST was a subsidiary company of ''Amtsgruppe W'' (''Amt. W'') of SS Main Economic ...

Systemic Infrastructure Initiative funding over three years 2002 to 2004. to implemented the system in participating Australian university libraries.

Software

The AARLIN portal provided a simultaneous searching function, targeting

OPAC The online public access catalog (OPAC), now frequently synonymous with ''library catalog'', is an online database of materials held by a library or Library consortium, group of libraries. Online catalogs have largely replaced the analog card c ...

s, citation and fulltext databases,

KINETICA ''Kinetica'' is a 2001 racing video game developed by Santa Monica Studio and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 2 in North America. The game incorporates the use of SoundMAX audio technology by Analog Devices. It wa ...

, subject gateways, and other search engines. It also improved a user's access to fulltext data by deep linking to electronic resources or facilitating document delivery requests where appropriate. The AARLIN project utilised two types of software, both produced by Ex Libris: *

MetaLib MetaLib is a federated search system developed by Ex Libris Group. MetaLib conducts simultaneous searches in multiple, and often heterogeneous, information resources such as library catalogs, journal articles, newspapers and selected quality Inter ...

, front-end federated search software that enables searching across a range of resources * SFX, an

OpenURL An OpenURL is similar to a web address, but instead of referring to a physical website, it refers to an article, book, patent, or other resource within a website. OpenURLs are similar to permalinks because they are permanently connected to a r ...

link server that helps library patrons navigate to resources and services relevant to their search queries The AARLIN Consortium was closely aligned with Metalib/SFX vendor

Ex Libris Group Ex Libris Group is an Israeli software company that develops integrated library systems and other library software. Their headquarters is in the Malha Technology Park in southwestern Jerusalem. It has ten other offices around the world. In Octobe ...

, contributing heavily to their global user community and contributing features which would later be replicated and included into the main software packages.

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Aarlin 1999 establishments in Australia 2010 disestablishments in Australia Library and information science software