The history of libraries' automation, beginning from the Library of Congress, shows a strong trend to Information Retrieval more than conservation. The last generation of software covers two main requirements of the document management: the standardized recording of data, so that they can be made compatible, retrieved and spreaded; the integration of data coming from different supports. Alexandrie, a software made in France and distributed in Italy by Ifnet, complies with standardization criteria, flexibility and integration of the supports. A field structure and a window system create archives that can be navigated at the same time. Main characteristics are: the thesaurus construction and the direct production of cd-rom.
The sw is particularly suitable for medium size archives.