Ariel®—Document Delivery on the
Internet
In the late 1980s RLG's resource sharing community
needed a better tool for rapid delivery of "nonreturnable" (copied)
materials. At that time interlibrary loan staffs had numerous problems
with fax technology—poor image quality, the cost of machines
and telecommunications, the amount of preprocessing required to prepare
a document for faxing (especially from bound volumes), and more.
We surveyed members and determined that the rising level
of Internet connectivity, plus the growing affordability of scanners
and laser printers, would enable us to develop a document transmission
workstation that would be a new model for document delivery.
We took its name from the spirit Ariel in Shakespeare The
Tempest, who replies when sent to do his master's
bidding—"I drink the air before me, and return or ere your
pulse beat twice."
In 1991 we released the first version of Ariel software
to a small band of early adopters of this new delivery model. By 2003,
when Infotrieve acquired the product from RLG to continue its support
and accelerate new enhancements, Ariel had become a familiar tool in
libraries and document supply centers around the world.
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