Native name אקס ליבריס Area served Worldwide Headquarters Jerusalem, Israel Owner ProQuest Number of locations 11 | Type Private Website www.exlibrisgroup.com Number of employees 500 Founded 1986 | |
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Industry Library automation software Key people Matti Shem Tov (CEO)
Eric Hines (President of North America) Subsidiaries Ex Libris (Deutschland) GmbH, Ex Libris (UK) Ltd., Ex Libris (USA), Inc. Profiles | ||
Ex Libris Group is an Israeli software company that develops integrated library systems and other library software. The company is headquartered in Jerusalem, and has ten other offices around the world. The company claims to serve the 20 top universities worldwide as rated by Times Higher Education.
History
Ex Libris started as an internal project at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1980 to develop a new library management system, as no system at the time was able to handle both Hebrew and Latin character sets as required by the University. The software was called Automated Library Expandable Program or ALEPH-100 ("Aleph" is also the name of the first letter of many Semitic alphabets). In 1983, Yissum (the technology transfer company of the Hebrew University) founded Aleph-Yissum Ltd., a new company to commercialize the software. Yohanan Spruch, the original developer of ALEPH, became the company's chief technology officer. Between 1983 and 1988, all of the eight universities in Israel bought the program and linked up in a network.
In 1986 Ex Libris Ltd. was founded by technology entrepreneur Azriel Morag to market the software overseas. In 1993 ALEPH was deployed by the seventeen libraries of the Vatican and 200 libraries in 27 countries had bought it by 1995.
In 1995 Aleph-Yissum merged with Ex Libris Ltd. and reorganized as the Ex Libris Group, headed by Azriel Morag as the group's chief executive officer.
In July 1997, Ex Libris acquired Dabis, a leading vendor of automated library systems in the German speaking countries.
In 1999, venture capital funds Walden Israel and Tamar Ventures invest $4m in Ex Libris.
In February 2000, Ex Libris acquired the rights to SFX, an OpenURL link server software, from the University of Ghent.
In July 2000, Ex Libris launched MetaLib, a federated search system that conducts simultaneous searches in multiple information resources such as library catalogs, journal articles, newspapers.
In 2004, Ex Libris launched Verde, an electronic resource management system that manages the acquisition and licensing of electronic resources.
Golden Gate Capital bought Ex Libris in 2012. In October 2015, it was announced that Ex Libris would be acquired by ProQuest and that "Ex Libris, a ProQuest Company", would also manage the products of the Workflow Solutions division of ProQuest, such as Intota, Summon, and 360 Link.