Library Technology Guides

Statistical Report for Sierra

2013 Survey Results	2012 Survey Results	2011 Survey Results	2010 Survey Results	2009 Survey Results	2008 Survey Results	2007 Survey Results
Product: Sierra Response Distribution Statistics Category Responses 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Mode Mean Median ILS Satisfaction 170 2 1 12 5 3 12 22 55 39 19 7 6.54 7 ILS Functionality 170 1 1 4 8 4 12 15 54 51 20 7 6.85 7 Print Functionality 170 1 2 1 3 8 17 23 73 42 8 7.55 8 Electronic Functionality 167 3 3 2 13 13 29 30 31 30 13 7 5.97 6 Company Satisfaction 170 3 6 6 10 8 12 11 59 37 18 7 6.34 7 Support Satisfaction 166 3 6 9 7 7 18 28 38 32 18 7 6.11 7 Support Improvement 165 6 6 5 8 16 47 21 18 18 20 5 5.55 5 Company Loyalty 169 12 4 3 4 4 22 16 37 31 36 7 6.36 7 Open Source Interest 165 54 28 25 14 13 17 5 2 3 4 0 2.19 2 Category Total Yes percent Considering new ILS 173 10 5.78% Considering new Interface 173 36 20.81% System Installed on time? 173 159 91.91% Average Collection size: 746241 Type Count Public 64 Academic 77 School 1 Consortia 0 Special 1 Size Category Count [1] Under 10,000 6 [2] 10,001-100,000 35 [3] 100,001-250,000 34 [4] 250,001-1,000,000 55 [5] 1,000,001-10,000,000 35 [6] over 10,000,001 0	Product: Sierra Response Distribution Statistics Category Responses 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Mode Mean Median ILS Satisfaction 92 1 1 1 1 13 12 26 29 8 8 6.87 7 ILS Functionality 92 1 2 1 1 6 17 25 27 12 8 6.98 7 Print Functionality 0 0 6.98 Electronic Functionality 0 0 6.98 Company Satisfaction 93 1 1 2 2 11 8 23 28 17 8 7.08 7 Support Satisfaction 90 1 2 1 3 5 17 21 20 20 7 7.04 7 Support Improvement 92 1 2 3 8 4 30 7 15 11 11 5 5.78 5 Company Loyalty 92 2 2 2 4 10 7 12 15 38 9 7.22 8 Open Source Interest 92 37 16 11 7 4 10 2 3 1 1 0 1.90 1 Category Total Yes percent Considering new ILS 96 4 4.17% Considering new Interface 96 20 20.83% System Installed on time? 96 78 81.25% Average Collection size: 823674 Type Count Public 41 Academic 45 School 0 Consortia 0 Special 1 Size Category Count [1] Under 10,000 2 [2] 10,001-100,000 20 [3] 100,001-250,000 21 [4] 250,001-1,000,000 24 [5] 1,000,001-10,000,000 26 [6] over 10,000,001 0	Product: Sierra Response Distribution Statistics Category Responses 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Mode Mean Median ILS Satisfaction 2 1 1 5 7.00 9 ILS Functionality 2 1 1 2 5.50 9 Print Functionality 0 0 5.50 Electronic Functionality 0 0 5.50 Company Satisfaction 2 1 1 3 6.00 9 Support Satisfaction 2 1 1 7 8.00 9 Support Improvement 2 1 1 5 7.00 9 Company Loyalty 2 1 1 5 7.00 9 Open Source Interest 2 1 1 0 2.50 5 Category Total Yes percent Considering new ILS 2 0 0.00% Considering new Interface 2 0 0.00% System Installed on time? 2 2 100.00% Average Collection size: 749668 Type Count Public 1 Academic 1 School 0 Consortia 0 Special 0 Size Category Count [1] Under 10,000 0 [2] 10,001-100,000 0 [3] 100,001-250,000 0 [4] 250,001-1,000,000 2 [5] 1,000,001-10,000,000 0 [6] over 10,000,001 0	Product: Sierra Response Distribution Statistics Category Responses 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Mode Mean Median ILS Satisfaction 0 0 749668.50 ILS Functionality 0 0 749668.50 Print Functionality 0 0 749668.50 Electronic Functionality 0 0 749668.50 Company Satisfaction 0 0 749668.50 Support Satisfaction 0 0 749668.50 Support Improvement 0 0 749668.50 Company Loyalty 0 0 749668.50 Open Source Interest 0 0 749668.50 Category Total Yes percent Considering new ILS 0 0 0.00% Considering new Interface 0 0 0.00% System Installed on time? 0 0 0.00% Average Collection size: 749668 Type Count Public 0 Academic 0 School 0 Consortia 0 Special 0 Size Category Count [1] Under 10,000 0 [2] 10,001-100,000 0 [3] 100,001-250,000 0 [4] 250,001-1,000,000 0 [5] 1,000,001-10,000,000 0 [6] over 10,000,001 0	Product: Sierra Response Distribution Statistics Category Responses 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Mode Mean Median ILS Satisfaction 0 0 749668.50 ILS Functionality 0 0 749668.50 Print Functionality 0 0 749668.50 Electronic Functionality 0 0 749668.50 Company Satisfaction 0 0 749668.50 Support Satisfaction 0 0 749668.50 Support Improvement 0 0 749668.50 Company Loyalty 0 0 749668.50 Open Source Interest 0 0 749668.50 Category Total Yes percent Considering new ILS 0 0 0.00% Considering new Interface 0 0 0.00% System Installed on time? 0 0 0.00%	Product: Sierra Response Distribution Statistics Category Responses 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Mode Mean Median ILS Satisfaction 0 0 749668.50 ILS Functionality 0 0 749668.50 Print Functionality 0 0 749668.50 Electronic Functionality 0 0 749668.50 Company Satisfaction 0 0 749668.50 Support Satisfaction 0 0 749668.50 Support Improvement 0 not applicable Company Loyalty 0 0 749668.50 Open Source Interest 0 0 749668.50 Category Total Yes percent Considering new ILS 0 0 0.00% Considering new Interface 0 0 0.00% System Installed on time? 0 0 0.00%	Product: Sierra Response Distribution Statistics Category Responses 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Mode Mean Median ILS Satisfaction 0 0 749668.50 ILS Functionality 0 0 749668.50 Print Functionality 0 0 749668.50 Electronic Functionality 0 0 749668.50 Company Satisfaction 0 0 749668.50 Support Satisfaction 0 0 749668.50 Support Improvement 0 not applicable Company Loyalty 0 0 749668.50 Open Source Interest 0 0 749668.50 Category Total Yes percent Considering new ILS 0 0 0.00% Considering new Interface 0 0 0.00% System Installed on time? 0 0 0.00%

Comments

The number of items in the library includes electronic books through EBSCO and Ebrary, as well as Proquest Safari and StatRef. (Type: Academic)

Sierra purchased in 2013, will be implemented in April 2014. (Type: Consortium)

We are still waiting for a discovery product to meet our needs. Each one has its biases and flaws. (Type: Law)

The major strength of the Sierra ILS is the ability to gain direct access to the system database. It opens a lot of possibilities for customized reports as well as feeding homegrown applications with data directly from the system. (Type: Public)

All open source systems we evaluated are lacking full functionality such as full EDIFACT ordering and electronic invoicing. Until these basic functions are working reliably our library does not have the staffing needed to deal with hand keying acquisitions and invoice data. (Type: Public)

We have just moved from millennium to Sierra and are in the process of familiarising ourselves with the new interface. So far things are looking good but we don't feel that enough time has passed for us to make a firm judgement yet (Type: Public)

The company keeps promising new features and functionality in its new ILS, but after a year and a half we are still waiting on these features. We are still waiting for full basic functionality to work in the ILS as well. (Type: Academic)

We haven't been on Sierra very long but it has been a long and bumpy road. Sierra is marketed as a new innovative system but to me it seems that it is Innovative's old system wrapped up in a new user interface. We've had many issues and a lot of them weren't or can't be resolved. The company still has to tight of a control over the system. I miss Sirsi Dynix Symphony system for the configuration and customization abilities we had with that system. (Type: Academic)

Number of items and circulations become less and less relevant as we weed older materials and replace with online full-text or streaming alternatives (Type: Academic)

We've had a rough start with Sierra. Lots of bugs and performance issues. III is fixing reported issues and releasing improvements fairly rapidly, but it is still an immature product. (Type: Theology)

We migrated to Sierra this past spring. While we're happy with the improvements over Millennium, so far we haven't seen many of the benefits touted when we were sold the upgrade. (Type: Public)

When we first implemented Sierra support was bad, however in the past year III has improved dramatically and has the best customer support of any of the vendors I work with. (Type: Academic)

Sierra is not library staff friendly or patron friendly. Patrons have not adapted to the card catalog--we have to do all the work for them. It is very difficult to search for items for patrons. Report creation is a nightmare. Sierra is a poor product that needs a lot of tweaking. (Type: Public)

[...] is a part of the [...] consortium. All libraries in the consortium use the Innovative Interfaces product, so we will not consider switching unless the consortium does. (Type: Academic)

We had problems at the beginning, but our provider did a very good job of correcting them (Type: Public)

Sierra is an improvement from Millennium. III promoted it as an open system. This is really not accurate because it is still not open. There's a lot of things that we want to do with SQL and all but it is still very limited. It also has not caught up with the way librarians manage their collection. Most of what we manage now are electronic but Sierra is still predicated in the management of print. We can't even integrate our PDA without doing a lot of massaging with the data. (Type: Academic)

Innovative has offered us consistently good customer service with a high resolution rate and done so in a timely manner. Their technicians are easy to work with and do all they can to resolve issues quickly. (Type: Academic)

It is difficult to get support on holidays. For public libraries, sometimes holidays are the best time to do major implementations or projects because we are already closed to the public. (Type: Public)

• One of 4 institutions in a consortium;
• Still on Millennium with Reference database; III working on equivalent for Sierra;
• III opened an office in South Africa (Announced at Nov 2013 IUGSA conference) - good news for us;
• Although this survey focuses on the ILS, I want to mention, as development partners, our dissatisfaction with Content Pro related resolution of problems

(Type: Academic)

Sierra's technical features are not the only deciding factor. Their pricing structure and off-site hosting were factors in the choice. (Type: Public)

[...] migrated in July 2013 from the Liberty (SoftLink) system to the Sierra (iii) system, contracting with the [...] and participating in resource sharing via courier with both [...] . This provides patrons in the tri-county area easy access to 400,000+ items. (Type: Public)

Migrated recently from III Millennium to III Sierra. Still a few "known issues" being fixed. Customer Service is usually responsive, but uneven levels of knowledge among help staff. Active user-group website is a useful resource when vendor documentation isn't clear. (Type: Academic)

We are under pressure to join the main library's consortium ILS at the same time that ILS is targeted for replacement. We'd like to hold onto our separate ILS, but will consider merging with the main library's discovery platform (Summon) as our contract expires. (Type: Law)

We upgraded from Millennium to Sierra within the last year, due to State Library upgrading. We find the back end of Sierra rather slow & clunky to use and there have been frequent glitches. Some features which we would like to have, have not been enabled due to State Library / other libraries in the consortium not prioritising them, e.g. SIP2 to allow self-service borrowing. (Type: Medical)

- (Type: Academic)

We migrated from Millennium to Sierra in the past year, and have found it less effective than Millennium. We lost functionality and processing speed in the upgrade, while paying the company more. (Type: Academic)

Contract was signed [...] but to date, an executed project plan has not been implemented (December 3, 2013), some due to state regulations. Evaluations above are not meant to rank the vendor down in any way, but I don't have enough data to go on; nor do I hope the slowness of the first six months of the contract is an indicator of the upcoming migration process.. (Type: Academic)

The number of items in our system includes our ebook collection. (Type: Academic)

I cannot really answer this as our catalog is controlled and managed by the [...] . They handle all decisions and changes with Sierra and interact directly with III for issues. For any Discovery products, they use WorldCat and we must use it also. We can make suggestions, but have no final say. (Type: Academic)

Impressed by recent change at III - they have done some great bespoke development for us (archival hierarchies/full text of digitised content in Encore). But not sure pace of change is fast enough, or that III will ever be open enough for us. (Type: Special)

Cloud-based ILS is essential in the future (Type: )

Our Sierra Uplift presented problems specific to this site as the product was still in development and certain modules were not 'Sierra ready'. Some fixes provided do not seem to stick. (Type: State)

Our BePress Digital Commons site is becoming as important for management of resources as our Integrated Library System. We consider both to be excellent systems. (Type: Academic)

We don't make ILS decisions by ourself, so our responses can't be taken into consideration without those of our automation consortium. (Type: Public)

The transition to Sierra has been a bit bumpy. I don't think III was quite prepared for the number of libraries who wanted to migrate this year. (Type: Academic)

We recently moved to Innovative’s new ILS platform “Sierra”. As with any major rollout of a new system; there were obstacles that we encountered and worked through. With regards to our electronic resources; the management of our electronic resources is managed from our end. Although moving to a new ILS system has not been brought to my direct attention, we are constantly seeking new innovative ways to achieve our goals. (Type: Public)

the new owners attitude towards working with their customers is refreshing. They truly seem to care and want to resolve issues when they occur. (Type: Consortium)

We are a very large public library and find that the ILS cannot handle some of the functions we need. Clearly, it was not written to accommodate a large public. In addition, we are unhappy with the charges for any extra functionality and services that the company provides, such as refreshing the data in our testing system. Customer service, although improved, needs more work - seems like III grew too big too fast with the new software and the service reps can't handle the volume. (Type: Public)

Reports that meet the needs of a public school are not adequate. Printing continues to be a HUGE issue. There should not be a 3rd party software involved with printing basic function such as spine labels and barcodes. (Type: School)

We are looking into developing a local "bento box" style all-in-one search interface, similar to what NCSU and a few other libraries currently use. We are also working on developing a local API for our ILS, Sierra. (Type: Academic)

Next time, ask about listserves and their customer service knowledge base. (Type: Academic)

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Library Technology Guides is a service provided by Marshall Breeding, independent consultant, author, and speaker.