I thought that I would resurrect this Open Letter to Infotreive:
I have been using Ariel to receive and send documents since I started in ILL in 2005. When I started, almost every document that I received came through Ariel (though there was a higher proportion of FAXes and regular mail hardcopy articles). In other words, Ariel had complete market dominance. That first year 3.4 was released and then an update. Since that time, there has been almost no support for Ariel; there has been no software upgrade, there has been minimal support from Infotreive. In 2006, when my school decided to go from hardcopy delivery of articles received in Ariel to using the web server, there was no support from Infotreive phone calls were never returned; to finally get it set up we had to get help from another library. The state of Ariel is woeful. Not a week (sometimes not a day) goes by without an "we are dropping Ariel" announcement on the Ariel listserve. For five years, you have ignored this product which was a central part of the resource sharing technology. No one can get help. The software is never upgraded. It is time to stop pretending that you will ever service Ariel. It is time to release the source code for Ariel so that we users (or our programmer co-workers) can upgrade and troubleshoot Ariel. I have had to learn to live with not being able to rotate a page in a scanned document because Ariel will likely crash and this means that I will completely lose the document (of course now we just do it with Odyssey). I have had to live with entering every patron I deliver to by hand because the address book import does not work (if you make a typo in an email address there is no way to find out without the patron complaining). I invite the listserve to join me in this call. Jim Cummings Interlibrary Loan Borrowing Assistant J. W. England Library 4200 Woodland Ave University of the Sciences in Philadelphia Philadelphia, PA 19104-4495 215-596-8969 215-596-8760 FAX DOCline/OCLC: PAUPPS/PCP Ariel: ariel.usp.edu Odyssey: illiad.usp.edu [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> | www.usciences.edu<http://www.usciences.edu/> USciences: Where healthcare and science converge. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Annie Keville Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 2:36 PM To: Discussion of the Ariel Document Transmission System Subject: RE: [ARIE-L] ARIEL dead at GAC Google Infotrieve and Ariel. There's a website for Infotrieve Corporate that has phone numbers for Customer Service (800-422-4633 is the Toll Free Customer Service number). Or you can click on the bottom of the page and fill out a form . I just did that, but the screen that I could see after I submitted the contact form stated that I'd updated it on 2008.. so I'm not holding out much hope that a real person will actually see it any time soon. Annie Keville, Interlibrary Lending Coordinator Olin Interlibrary Services B42 Olin Library Central Avenue Cornell University Ithaca, New York 14853-5301 607-255-5293 [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]]<mailto:[mailto:[email protected]]> On Behalf Of Melissa Jackson Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 2:13 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Cc: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [ARIE-L] ARIEL dead at GAC Effective immediately, we can not send or receive documents by ARIEL thanks to a problem with their licensing servers. Apparently they can't verify that we have a valid copy of the software, and I can't find their number to call to get help. We will continue to try and get it working again, but for now please send all articles to us by Odyssey, Article Exchange, or email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. Thanks! Melissa Jackson ILL Librarian Armstrong Atlantic State University (GAC)
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