by George Lorenzo

Before Docutek Information Systems, Inc., became a technology company geared toward helping librarians meet the challenges of the Digital Age, it was Philip Kesten’s and Slaven Zivkovic’s labor of love that resulted in a software product for facilitating electronic study groups.

In the early 90s, Kesten, an associate professor of Physics and chairman of the Physics Department at Santa Clara University, and Zivkovic, who was Kesten’s student at the time, discovered that libraries, in particular, were interested in the development of their software. "So, we took our software and pushed it away from the electronic study group and more in the direction of a document system that would allow library people and faculty to put material on electronic reserve for students," Kesten says.

Kesten still holds his academic positions at Santa Clara, along with adding the Docutek title of vice president of marketing to his resume. Zivkovic is now Docutek’s vice president of business development. The company has grown considerably and is now being led by Nathan Vince, president and CEO, who has a background as a senior executive for a leading manufacturer of power supplies. In addition to Kesten, Zivkovic and Vince, the company has another four senior executives on the management team and an impressive group of 11 advisors who are professionals in the field of librarianship or information services.

The company’s ERes and VRLplus products have grown in popularity as libraries look to expand their services with the aid of technology.

Docutek’s flagship product, ERes, is system software that gives libraries the ability to Web-enable their reserve operations. ERes includes copyright-management functions, Internet resource management tools, electronic document delivery services, and a patent-pending "DocuFax" tool that enables librarians to fax documents directly to electronic reserves, eliminating the need for scanning and pdf conversion.

"This is the stuff that librarians really care about these days," Kesten says. "We have set up a partnership with the Copyright Clearance Center. With a single click of a button on our system, a librarian can request electronic permission to use a document from OCC and get that permission back electronically. It goes directly into the ERes system, where the document is turned on. The whole process is done electronically."

ERes is currently in use by more than 300 libraries worldwide. "Our largest school has over 70,000 students, and our smaller schools are in the range of under 1,000 students," Kesten adds.

Docutek’s VRLplus product enables reference librarians to converse directly with patrons online in real time as they guide them through Web sites and other online resources. The system also collects detailed statistics on system usage, such as number of logins, questions asked, and session duration.

VRLplus features full co-browsing, which enables the librarian and patron to share the same Web pages, including online databases and other services that require authentication.

At end of 2002, 25 libraries were using VRLplus. In less than nine months, the number of VRLplus installations has increased to 200 libraries today, approximately 150 in higher education and the remainder in public libraries.

"More and more the market was looking for something that would allow for real-time communications with some kind of co-browsing capability," says Vince. "I see it continuing to be adopted at a very fast pace."

What’s in store for the future? According to Vince, with the growth of increased and cheaper bandwidth; improved hardware; more sophisticated software; and increased student computer access, particularly in higher education; librarians will see more full-live-chat features, more queing in the software, and increased adoption of co-browsing. The addition of video-streaming and voice delivery using Internet protocol (VoIP) technologies are also coming onto the playing field.

Digital reference service with live communication functions "is definitely a hot topic," says Vince. "It started a couple of years ago and is actually at the point now where most of your academics and higher education institutions are involved with digital reference or virtual reference in some capacity."

www.docutek.com