Library Technology Guides

Statistical Report for Voyager

2010 Survey Results	2009 Survey Results	2008 Survey Results	2007 Survey Results
Product: Voyager Response Distribution Statistics Category Responses 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Mode Mean Median ILS Satisfaction 123 4 3 10 25 25 42 13 1 7 6.01 6 Company Satisfaction 123 1 5 5 11 18 30 39 13 1 7 5.90 6 Support Satisfaction 120 4 4 4 11 21 32 23 20 1 6 5.79 6 Support Improvement 118 3 3 6 11 52 14 18 11 5 5.33 5 Company Loyalty 121 2 3 4 5 13 27 15 28 17 7 7 5.77 6 Open Source Interest 120 11 16 16 14 9 18 9 8 9 10 5 4.07 4 Category Total Yes percent Considering new ILS 124 40 32.26% Considering new Interface 124 63 50.81% System Installed on time? 124 106 85.48% Average Collection size: 1095582	Product: Voyager Response Distribution Statistics Category Responses 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Mode Mean Median ILS Satisfaction 164 8 10 9 31 39 41 22 4 7 5.91 6 Company Satisfaction 162 1 1 7 12 17 23 35 45 19 2 7 5.73 6 Support Satisfaction 162 1 3 11 15 12 20 26 44 25 5 7 5.72 6 Support Improvement 153 2 5 8 8 18 54 17 17 18 6 5 5.27 5 Company Loyalty 160 11 5 5 11 14 22 20 42 17 13 7 5.51 6 Open Source Interest 164 24 19 23 11 8 23 16 19 12 9 0 3.97 4 Category Total Yes percent Considering new ILS 164 31 18.90% Considering new Interface 164 89 54.27% System Installed on time? 164 142 86.59%	Product: Voyager Response Distribution Statistics Category Responses 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Mode Mean Median ILS Satisfaction 87 6 5 8 5 23 21 17 2 6 6.01 6 Company Satisfaction 87 1 1 5 9 5 16 15 23 11 1 7 5.59 6 Support Satisfaction 87 1 4 3 10 5 13 19 14 14 4 6 5.57 6 Support Improvement 0 not applicable Company Loyalty 87 5 3 10 7 7 12 11 13 13 6 7 5.14 5 Open Source Interest 86 10 7 10 6 4 14 7 10 4 14 5 4.66 5 Category Total Yes percent Considering new ILS 87 19 21.84% Considering new Interface 87 40 45.98% System Installed on time? 87 83 95.40%	Product: Voyager Response Distribution Statistics Category Responses 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Mode Mean Median ILS Satisfaction 83 1 3 12 3 17 19 22 5 1 7 5.51 6 Company Satisfaction 110 1 5 9 14 13 17 24 21 5 1 6 4.93 5 Support Satisfaction 108 4 5 9 13 14 14 18 19 10 2 7 4.88 5 Support Improvement 0 not applicable Company Loyalty 105 16 2 11 13 9 25 9 8 6 6 5 4.15 5 Open Source Interest 107 10 8 12 12 13 12 15 12 6 7 6 4.35 4 Category Total Yes percent Considering new ILS 111 24 21.62% Considering new Interface 111 53 47.75% System Installed on time? 111 1 0.90%

Comments

We might like it better if we didn't have to get a new server every few years to keep up with upgrades. We are a couple years behind due to lack of funds for yet another server.

We just started EBSCO's EHIS product (Fed searching). We will probably wait until Voyager is no longer developed before considering a new system i.e. 3 to 5 years from now.

I think we will actively consider a discovery interface or Next-generation catalog in the next five years.

We expect that our next upgrade (planned whithin the next 5 months) may well be our last for an ils. The current vendors ils offerings no longer seem to meet the needs of our organisation

We are not formally looking at replacing our ILS at present. We are satisfied with Voyager and with the vendor. However, financial pressures are causing problems. We have had extremely tight budgets for the past two years, and this coming year may be even worse. We have lost positions, and face losing more. We may need to look for something less expensive. I have begun to look seriously at OCLC's Web-scale Management Services. This has not yet progressed beyond my review of the capabilities and paying attention to their news releases and webinars. But we may eventually need to move in this direction for financial reasons.

We use WorldCat Local as our exclusive catalog/discovery service.

currently looking at open source systems

The exposure of APIs and complete reworking of the OPAC in xml has definitely changed our opinion of Voyager in a positive way over the past year or two. Since we recently purchased new server hardware and because we host three local community college libraries on our Voyager system, we are not in a position to move to an open-source ILS soon, but would seriously consider one. We are also extremely likely to look at moving into a hosted/cloud SAS environment in a few years when the server hardware is aging.

We will upgrade to a new Voyager version in a couple of weeks.

The ILS is decreasing in importance as material moves to electronic-based delivery. URM is a step forward in the right direction as it is focused on resource inventory and management rather than the traditional focus most products and open-source projects seem to subscribe to.

Our system is over 10 years old, and we've been on it for 10 years. Although it is still viable, it will take some time to find or create a replacement. At this time we are beginning to explore our options for the future.

See comment in previous question. Our library views proprietary ILS solutions as still heading in the wrong direction. Optimistic about the direction of the OCLC webscale product but pessimistic over the cost, current functionality and licensing of the "one-database" model

Budgetary constraints are a concern.

The user support group seems to have disappeared. The list serve suport group works well for Technical services.

Obviously we need to update our version of Voyager. We have also considered changing vendors, but no specifics as yet.

We have implemented OCLC WorldCat Local Quick Start.

although we struggle sometimes with vendor support, the ExLibris Voyager community is very innovative and technically supportive. To its credit ExLibris does support an open source platform for code contributions as well as a user generated wiki on enhancements

Current version of ILS is not supported by vendor.

Voyager was a good product in its time but has become very dated. It is pretty much at end of life as Ex Libris is working on a new ILS and is not prepared to put any increased resources into Voyager. New development is underwhelming and poorly designed - some of the new features to be released in 2011 are a global data change module (good, but would have been great a year or two ago), text message notices (though bizarrely only for three types of notices; perhaps noone in Chicago owns a mobile phone so they don't see what all the fuss has been for the last decade), restrictions on library staff passwords (the types of characters, mandatory refreshing - very good things but the settings can't be modified by administrators), and allowing library staff to change their own passwords (yes, in 2011!). There are many existing limitations and frustrations, such as some staff modules being small and fixed size. It seems that Ex Libris doesn't care about a poor user experience - they certainly know about the issues because they get brought up on the mailing list frequently - highlighted by the fact that the new global data change module will have a fixed size window also. Support is slow and unsatisfactory. Only a small number of highly critical bugs get fixed promptly - all others will get fixed at some indeterminate point in time and included in a future release. So if you have a reasonably important bug, say the short loan feature becomes unusable or OPAC boolean searching gets broken (both real examples), you have to wait until your next upgrade (6-18 months for us) until the problem gets solved for your users. Assuming that it is fixed by then - many nontrivial bugs have been hanging around untouched for years.

In the process of implementing Primo with Primo Central for resource discovery. Other products we considered: EBSCO Discovery; Summon

Reasons for the consideration of an open source ILS are financial, not necessarily because of dissatisfaction with our present ILS vendor/ILS system.

We have been on Voyager for 10 years and we are currently reviewing our ILS to see how it is meeting our needs. We are interested in looking at the possibility of one full-featured system as opposed to our current installation of putting functions together from several vendors.

Though unlikely to consider an open source ILS we do run VuFind, the open source OPAC.

As i'm sure you know,Voyager has changed owners twice over our contract period. ExLibris is doing a good job now.

Voyager is used across[...], and I admit I have not given much thought to alternatives. However, if I were involved in those considerations, I expect my enthusiasm for open-source software would strongly influence any contribution I might make.

Budget and staff restrictions are the reason for negative responses on acquiring discovery interface or Next-gen catalog, not need/want.

We have no current plans for a wholescale ILS migration but will be monitoring progress with Ex Libris' URM and weighing our options.

This library has acquired WorldCat Local. It is also thinking of a new ILS, but not acting on its own. It is participating in the consortium's research group to see what is possible.

We've enabled the Google Books webservice in Voyager. I'm also trying to keep up with the Open Library API and am adding links to free scanned books on the Internet Archive that get "discovered" via the Open Library API. If you search our catalog with "Internet Archive" as a keyword anywhere phrase you can see the current scope. I feel my practices are in the spirit of FRBR, and anticipate them to some degree.

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