This page lists the narrative of comments given by individuals responding to the 2014 library automation perceptions survey. Comments have been redacted to remove content that identifies the indivudual or institution.
There were 994 narrative comments given.
I have not yet started working with follett in this manner but have started looking into this as another avenue. I am looking for books that have unlimited access as I am an elementary school and that is what is needed at this level for my students and teachers.
The [...] non longer maintains a separate library. Instead, they contract with [...] for library services. The collections have been merged.
Even though ABCD is still being developed, we are satisfied with it and will continue contributing in its development
Solicito se pongan en contacto con [...] , desarrolladora del software ABCD, para promocionarlo y la comunidad conozca las bondades de este sistema muy útil a ser utilizado en cualquier Institución que desee implementar un SIGB.
Nos decidimos por Absys porque su empresa Baratz respondió a tiempo y con presteza a nuestras solicitudes. Pero sobre la marcha hemos ido identificando deficiencias en Absys que no han podido ser salvadas y que finalmente la empresa no parece estar interesada en implementar. Por ello hemos decidido considerar la migración a un SIGB más robusto, actualizado y adaptable.
El SIGB que tenemos instalado está adquirido por el Gobierno Vasco para toda la Red de Bibliotecas municipales (+200) en el Pais Vasco, de forma que no podemos plantearnos cambio alguno, ya que esté se debería hacer de forma colectiva para todas las bibliotecas de la Red.
Recién hemos adquirido el SIGB Absysnet. Actualmente estamos en fase de implementación y pruebas, al igual que el EDS. Pero hasta el momento está cubriendo la mayoría de las expectativas que tenemos. Con el uso y funcionameinto a lo largo del nuevo año podremos dar unas respuestas más claras y precisas sobre el Siste,a
AL tener un SIGB a través de un consorcio, las capacidades de personalización son pocas. Además, ABSYS presenta algunos fallos en la recuperación de información a través de la opción de búsqueda desde el SIGB. NO nos es posible gestionar con el SIGB el control de publicaciones periódicas, porque al estar en Red, parece ser que da problemas la localización de fondos. Hay operaciones mal planteadas, preguntas innecesarias, poca usabilidad para los que trabajamos diariamente en la atención al público. Consideramos que la hegemonía de este sistema en las bibliotecas públicas está frenando su mejora. No existe posibilidad de catálogo de nueva generación o adaptación del catálogo a su consulta a través del móvil.
No tenemos contacto directo con la empresa. Estamos en la Red de Bibliotecas públicas Valencianas y todo se hace a través de la institución valenciana encargada coordinar las bibliotecas municipales. No podemos contestar a las preguntas 5, 6, 7, y 9
La Biblioteca de la[...] forma parte de la Red de Bibliotecas Escolares pero sólo las Biblotecas Pedagógicas tienen su catálogo en línea
Project to implement Alma and Primo is imminent. Plan to migrate in the next 5 months
Library systems are increasingly dis-integrated and poorly connected--from library cataloging to integrated discovery tools to institutional repositories to learning management systems and publishing platforms. No vendor presents a holistic view with APIs to facilitate integration.
Sorry but we didn't understand this question: For the most recent ILS implemented in this library, was the system installed and put into production on schedule according to the terms of your contract?
Very flexible for configure services, we are a multilibrary system with different loan schemes.
How effective is this product in managing your library's electronic resources? - This is of course mainly done with SFX. Overall pretty satisfied with Ex Libris and their products. Exception being Verde, which is horrible.
Prices policy of vendor is not clear. Hiden additional costs arise when upgrading and/or migrating or when new functionalities added as "extras", not included in standard package.
for number of items : we count all items in ILS
Number of items in collection this year includes digital records for ebooks, streaming videos, etc. in addition to the print resources. We are ready for a next-gen ILS and are fortunate that [...] provides the technical support we need. Ex Libris is not responsive to our individual needs; a system with more open source features allows [...] to customize for [...] libraries.
We're in the process of looking at discovery interfaces and possibly an ILS. There's not a lot of choice because we don't have the resources to run a local system anymore, so everything has to be cloud based.
As part of the [...] system, we negotiate as a group, so we have little say in our ILS and the ILS vendor. The benefits of being part of a consortium where we do not have to host our own server or make system upgrades or back up our own data outweigh the negative aspect of not being able to make an ILS change on our own. The Aleph system is outdated and clunky and difficult to program, but it's what we've got.
We are generally happy with Ex Libris, and hope that new US leadership will improve issues with support as experience over the past year.
We are currently testing our SFX instance which will be launched to the public at the same time we launch Primo. Really too early to answer some questions about the experience.
We are in the process of migrating to OCLC WMS, so responses are colored by that decision. Go live on Nov. 17.
Ex-Libris could do much to improve the level of service that they provide to their customers.
Although our library is not wild about the service from Ex Libris, we are part of a consortium and must use the system the consortium selects, which might be another Ex Libris product.
Our cooperation with Aleph Polska (Polish vendor for ExLibris' Products) works well.
The ILS Aleph500 is sufficient for our small print stock. It is a very traditional oriented software. The administration of all electronic resources is unsufficient. But the work with an Cloud-Service is not the solution for us, because there are problems with the data safety for libraries in research institutes.
We have been running Aleph since 2001. Our answers are based on the overall experience of the past 13 years. Our experience with our vendor is that they agree to everything you request at the time of sale but in the end they don't deliver. The support staff is great but the company's customer support services needs improvement. If the software doesn't have a service that we need there is very little that the support staff can do other than suggest workarounds.
in our case the developer has no office in the country, only a representative company with a small team, which sometimes makes it difficult to give us support and training.
[...]
[...] will "go live" on Alma [...]. Because we are still in migration, I filled out this survey with responses directed toward our current Aleph ILS system in production. In addition, we already have Primo implemented and will continue using Primo subsequent to the Alma go-live date.
The consortia is made up of [...] campuses. Of these, [...] use the Ex Libris Aleph product. The central office supports [...] campuses in a hosted environment. In 2015 the central office will be conducting a broader review of system-wide services, and the evaluation of an Aleph replacement will be within the context of that review. Challenges: the range of institutions within our consortia have significantly different missions and budgets; how to meet very different needs across the consortia given that a one size solution has been problematic (not necessarily the fault of the software); there are few next-gen enterprise level systems available and they are still in development. The challenges go beyond considerations about particular vendors and product features. Further, education about the differences in design and scope of the developing systems - Alma, WMS, Intota, etc. needs to be conducted across the consortia to help identify how these systems can support institutional goals. My guestimate for seriously evaluating and selecting new system(s) will be in the 2016/2017 time frame.
Our library has been with this same product and consortium for a good number of years and are pleased with the vendor and those individuals who help us with any problems that might occur.
Our consortium is considering Kuali Ole as a possible library service platform. This would be a serious mistake for our library, as well as other smaller libraries in the consortium, who has one technology librarian. Since we have implemented WCL as a discovery layer, many here would prefer leaving Ex Libris and going totally with OCLC.
We do not deal directly with the ILS company and its customer service but through [...]. Also, the current system was implemented many years ago so we don't know if it was put into production as expected.
All libraries in our current system (28) use the same ILS w/ Primo discovery service, so we have little interaction with the actual company itself. Mostly our support. implementation, and new products/service come directly from the consortium responsible for all of us. We have little say in changes or updates, unfortunately.
As a part of the Icelandic consortium of libraries (ICL), this libary does not make any purchases or discovery tools on its own. The answers are reflecting the status for ICL to the best of my knowledge.
We are plugging along with Aleph with the rest of [...]. [...] has been a great help with questions/issues.
The systems are under development through our consortium UNILINC. We are moving from ALEPH, DIGITOOL, SFX to an integrated ALMA.
Main reasons for high score under 'consider working with this company again' are 1) the difficulty of changing system when we have so many products with Ex Libris, though this has changed with our dropping of Primo; and 2) the lack of a fully effective alternative system in the market. We are keeping a watch on Alma, but we do not see it yet as fit for purpose.
Mas informacion sobre SIGB en codigo abierto
Considero importante que el bilbiotecario tenga acceso a los reportes, ya sea de los usuarios existentes, de los libros actualizados y tambien, considerar en el programa que se otorge un reporte de los libros pendientes o en su caso, de los usuarios con prestamos pendientes
Falla el sistema en algunas oportunidades, no se puede imprimir el listado de libros de las cajas viajeras
Alexandria's support staff are very helpful and knowledgeable -- you call and get an actual tech right away!
The Alexandria ILS is weak on the administrative side of the program. Moving from Horizon to Alexandria I notice that I am limited on my ability to edit records and get the reports that I need. It is very user friendly for our school operators.
Our county is not financially able to switch, but most of the school librarians detest Alexandria and wish we had Destiny.
The library will be trying to migrate to use another ILS provider in the near future. The goal is to have a system that will be maintained by the ILS vendor as well as provide ADA capablities for those at our libraries.
Alexandria is working on providing circulation access for some ebook platforms. This is a development that I 2 very interested in seeing come to fruition.
The current ILS, Alexandria, is easy to use and very much an upgrade from the past ILS. However, it doesn't currently integrate with any discovery interface that I know of. Also doesn't have e-book integration with the vendor from which we get our electronic resources (EBSCO).
My students find it very user friendly and so do I. We have been using it since 1999 and will remain with this service.
Love this program and the tech support if wonderful. President of company often sends me information about upcoming fixes or gives me specific advice!
I am a new librarian, and find Alexandria frustrating. The system also had updates over the summer, so even people familiar with the system in our district are struggling. When I asked customer support for a new manual or possible training, I was offered training at an additional (high) cost, and pointed to some rather useless sales videos about the system. In addition, it will not support our new ebook collection since we didn't choose one of their three vendors, nor to pay an exorbitant additional fee.
We are actually only migrating to Alma/Primo now. [...] Our experience with Ex Libris so far is hard to gauge as we were a III customer for 19 years and are only now since June or so really working directly with Ex Libris. So there are pros and cons I can say about both companies. One from a long association, one I am just starting to learn. I will say I will miss working with people who are mostly in the same time zone I am in. I will say both are quality companies. But there are some very real differences. I have been happy and frustrated with them both. I will say that III has been, at least for us, very prompt and attentive in supporting us as we migrate. [...] they could have been less helpful. But the change in leadership of III likely has a lot to do with it. I never could understand how in a business relationship, personal feelings were allowed to creep in to a business relationship. [...] I the future if anyone asks my opinion of either company, I would say that they are good companies and have strong products. But each institution should really look closely at is to see if either III or Ex Libris or yet another company will be the right fit for them. My 2 cents.
While we are currently not that satisfied with Alma, we are part of a consortium of [...] libraries all working together to implement it. We knew going in that things were going to be rough. We expect that it will only get better and have great hope for the future.
If it's not clear from the above response, Ex-Libris' support of Primo has gone from bad to just plain very bad. They've reorganized and made some efforts to hire new staff but in reality it's not working.
Migrated to Alma as an early adopter. This required monthly updates with new features and fixes which will continue through 2015.
We've been implementing Alma for several months and are final approach to move to production. So far all expectations are being met and the implementation team has been top-notch. As with all major migrations, Dec/Jan will be critical in our perceptions of the system.
We have just migrated to this vendor in July and do not at this time have a lot of experience to judge it. We are still adjusting.
Currently implementing alma so some responses are early impressions
We are migrating to Alma and go live tomorrow, so our comments relate to our experiences relate purely to what we are experiencing in setup. We have only experienced Ex Libris's migration support, which is excellent, and have not yet transitioned to the regular support environment.
My consortium has worked in a development relationship with Ex Libris with the Alma product (consortium functionality), and has also implemented Primo for discovery support.
The baseline for operations for most of my consortium's institutions is an integrated library system in which the functionality for managing the print collection has been built out over more than two decades. In this context, the move to the emerging Alma product has been a radical adjustment for frontline staff. ExL has, in some cases, responded to institution pressure to improve functionality for the print collection (for example, predictive check-in support scheduled for the first half of 2015) while resisting changes in other areas (for example, notices produced by Alma – functionality guided by ExL’s work with its Alma development partners and depicted by ExL as set).
In terms of electronic content management: It’s really too early to judge. But given that my consortium is using Alma in production, I can say that significant pain points have been reported. Several institutions in the consortium that used SFX prior to the migration to Alma have identified functionality gaps between SFX and Alma’s Uresolver (with Uresolver providing inferior functionality in 2014). Cited problems include A-Z list support and research article access.
With Primo discovery, there have been significant benefits (tight tie with electronic content information in Alma) and significant problems (tool requires too much staff time to manage; poor interoperability with OCLC WorldCat; EBSCO refusal to allow its metadata to be indexed in Primo). This implementation has, in fact, been more challenging for my consortium than the implementation of the recently-released Alma service.
My take is that Ex Libris is very strong technically, though has in some cases it has continued to embrace legacy standards (example, ISO ILL). In my view, for a library technology vendor, ExL is very savvy.
Generally speaking., Ex Libris staff and leaders are both skilled and dedicated. I have a lot of confidence in the ExL team and I believe this is shared by most of my colleagues in the consortium.
Communication issue has been an ongoing challenge – ExL is a global company based in Israel. There have been too many cases in the past year in which poor communication skills or technology failures have reduced the effectiveness of web-based meetings.
About the question "How complete is the functionality of this ILS relative to the needs of this library?" --> Alma is still in developpment, so some features aren't workly correctly for the moment, but there are improvements every month. It's difficult to answer the question in this situation.
Capita understand the increasing importance of electronic resources to Higher Education and are developing and delivering services in collaboration with users to meet these needs.
We have given notice to Capita for August 2015 and are beginning an implementation programme with ExLibris with the aim to go live with Alma and Primo in August 2015.
We are currently under going a tender process in order to choose our next ILS to be integrated into our libraries by summer next year.
Alto suffering from being around a long time in a changing market, and having customers in both academic and private with competing needs. Can't cope with our opening hours very well because it was developed when libraries were open 9-5. problematic trying to issue round the clock.
We are aware that OCLC is ceasing development of AMLIB, and that we will need to migrate to a different product in the next few years. We are not keen on the OCLC replacement offering Worldshare, as it seems to be still somewhat "green" i.e not fully developed
As we have had a number of new employees we need more training to have a full understanding and to get the best use from the system
Unfortunately the vendor of the Amlib service died during 2014 and the support was transferred to another vendor. The initial vendor, InforSolve was excellent.
Not a lot is currently happening with the system - knowing that local government amalgamations will come into effect July 2015, Western Australian libraries may be looking to change their system at the same time.
OCLC's 'Amlib' ILS product is on target for releagetion to history and they OCLC have no plans to take it to a version 7.0 - they have informed customers that future development will be limited, then stop. OCLC want Amlib customers to migrate to WorldShare. Many libraries in Western Australia are on Amlib and are looking at alternatives now that Amlib is coming to an end. Our view is that Worldshare will not provide what we want as a public library service. Despite staff interest in open source products like KOHA, our organisation is not keen to opursue an open source option. As a result, we are looking keenly at Spydus.
Despite us being a small library, this product is becoming increasingly unreliable and does not always meet our needs or behave in a consistent manner
The customer service of Biblionix cannot be beat! They are incredible to work with!
[...]
We are extremely pleased with the new appearance of the online catalog. Our patrons are pleased with how easy it is to access e-books directly from the online catalog. Use of the catalog has doubled as a result of changes made by the company.
We are very satisfied with Biblionix
Biblionex has worked extremely well for the library and their customer service is outstanding.
We cannot speak highly enough of Apollo. They are constantly upgrading the system and its functionality and are very responsive to client requests & suggestions. They are quick to respond to issues and questions.
We love Biblionix! They are always very helpful and have never nickle and dimed us for Apollo upgrades/updates! They are easily reached if we need help or clarification. Even if a rep cannot be reached right away, we always receive a response same day! Apollo is just as great as the customer service! In searching for a new ILS, we found that many options available at the time were tailored for larger libraries. Apollo was and still is intuitive, flexible, affordable and customer-oriented; a perfect fit for any small to medium-sized library.
Biblionix is a family company focused on the needs of small public libraries. The software offers all the options we need, while the support personnel will work with us on whatever else might come up, whether it is a custom report due yesterday or interfacing with a self-check kiosk from another vendor. Wonderful to work with, Biblionix is the only company we know where the president answers his own phone :)
We are extremely satisfied with Apollo Biblionix automation software services. It is the most user-friendly version of automation we have had. It is also very nice to have the server off-site and for us not to have to be responsible for its maintenance. We migrated to Apollo in May 2014 and wish we had done so years ago. I find every aspect of the system to be easy to navigate and it is a definite time-saving system when it comes to cataloging materials. Library staff is very happy with this system and have no plans to change to any other system. Other librarians I have spoken with who have Apollo as their automation system always have highly favorable comments and praise for the Apollo Biblionix automation software.
The people at Biblionix continue to impress us. Their customer support is unbeatable, the ease of integration with other tools (eBooks, Zinio, statewide ILL, etc.) is amazing, the new catalog is beautiful -- and it's incredibly affordable even for our small budget.
Not sure exactly what you mean by electronic resources. We are part of a consortium in [...] that provides downloadable and ebooks. I don't manage that - its managed by the consortium and available at the library website. We have no other electronic resources. Biblionix provides the 'card catalog' at our website. They have been a dream to work with. I am the only employee at the [...] , and work part time. I am not a tech person but appreciate those who are.
Biblionix is a wonderful, responsive company. Apollo is a great tool. Currently, I would not consider another ILS.
Regarding the question above about service, Bibionix's service is excellent and remains excellent - so the 5 rating only reflect the constant level of service - not being worse or better in the last year (since they're aleady the best!).
We have been extremely pleased with the Apollo ILS. The product does everything we want it to do and more and the customer service is fantastic. I have used 5 other ILS products in my career and far and away like this one the best.
We've been very pleased to work with Biblionix over the last 7 years. As they've gotten bigger, we don't get quite the personal service as before, but they've continued to do a great job addressing our concerns and improving the product at no extra cost to us. I would choose them again in a heartbeat.
Apollo was chosen being specifically for small to mid-size public libraries. It provides the reports and statistics we need. It is easy to navigate and our patrons love the online catalog. It's cost effective, with no upkeep for our small library. This is a good company that takes pride in its product in all aspects. The Apollo team is personable, supportive and always available.
Biblionix has been fantastic with their support. Any problem we have, they are there with the answer. Couldn't do any better for as small as we are.
The group that services our needs is very responsive when we have issues and is always available with server problems or questions about the catalog that may cause problems. They are quick to keep us informed when they make changes to the database that could affect the staff and volunteers who use their system. I find them a thoroughly professional group of people with whom to work.
I've used five ILS products in my career and Apollo wins, hands down. It is sane, efficient, intuitive, and cost-effective. Not only is the company's customer service outstanding, Biblionix has demonstrated that it is genuinely interested in keeping our business.
The tech crew at Biblionix was amazing and walked me through an emergency migration when my old system was on the verge of crashing. I would recommend this company completely and without hesitation.
Apollo is geared towards small libraries. Customer service is excellent, price is reasonable. We previously had an open source ILS, Evergreen, which we complained about everyday. Since we switched to Apollo, no complaints. Easy to use, new catalog page is awesome!
Love the product, love the vendor support. They're constantly updating and improving the system - i.e. new catalog they're creating. Couldn't be happier with them.
This is the most responsive vendor that I have every worked with. They answer questions and solve problems immediately. They constantly improve the product. They seamlessly integrated Overdrive and OneClick digital holdings. They worked with the Texas State Library to integrate the interlibrary loan system with our ILS. They also regularly submit our records to OCLC.
We have been extraordinarily pleased with Apollo. The best thing about this product is its customer service.
We still use Athena which is no longer supported by the company. Therefore we no longer pay for it. The reason we haven't switched to another automation system is because we can't afford the annual support that would be charged to us.
Our library is very pleased with BookSystems, don't want to change
Good product with excellent tech support when you need it. Very happy with ATRIUUM.
Don't know what open source is
still needs fine tuning for tracking branch rotation of books overall very satisfied with service and impressed with the tech guys who walk us thru any issues.
Cost is a consideration. School library budgets are shrinking.
We were considering Atriuum and Apollo-- we ended up going with Atriuum because cost for both systems was similar, and myself and my staff liked the layout of Atriuum better. I do think both are excellent systems.
We are very satisfied with booksystems and plan to stay with them.
Most of the problems we have had with the software has to do with issues with our network and security software than with the library software. The library software is hosted by the company and works fine on our home computer and mobile device, but tends to freeze on the school computers.
Atriuum's strength is in reports and material reclassification. We can easily come up a specific list of materials, allowing us to reclassify them in bulk without ever going to the shelves or racking our brains for titles. this saves us a great deal of time. Book Systems support is quick to address any issue that arises and is patient with user error.
Our only real complaint with BookSystems is that they do not contact their patrons to alert us to upcoming upgrades. They also do not provide general help, providing clues to make sure we are using the fields correctly, etc. Their tech support is great--but sometimes problems occur that take them by surprise; e.g., a recent upgrade removed most of the thumbnails from our OPAC. They were surprised by the problem, and told us how to fix it after the fact. An alert in advance to make sure we were putting the correct ISBN or UPC code in the correct field would have saved us a LOT of time when we had to fix it.
This company is great to listen to suggestions from librarians and to submit ideas as "enhancement requests". I recently had a problem on a Saturday and was pleased that someone answered the support phone!
Excellent Service.
We use Baker & Taylor for our e-book distribution, and so Atriuum can provide no assistance on our electronic services. Otherwise, we are satisfied with the service provided.
Updates to the system are made at inopportune times. Changes would be better implemented over the weekend rather than during the workday.
Only problem with Book Systems was the inventory capability. They are working on an upgrade.
This library does not own,or lease any electronic material
We find building reports to be cumbersome. We are not using all the features because we don't have time to figure out how.
I rarely have any trouble with Atriuum. Seldom call tech support.
Very helpful and interested in making the experience better.
As a public library we do not use most of the features in Atriuum that are intended for school libraries. It would be nice to be able to turn off all of these features, preferably with a single button. We spend a lot of time teaching workers what to ignore.
I sometimes find they put out updates that haven't been fully BETA tested and have some kinks. They have been responsive to requests for new features although some small things like changing a tab name that might clarify things for patrons sometimes get ignored. Overall, they are much more responsive than our past vendors and we do feel the system has most things we need to run smoothly.
I am very happy with Book Systems, I recommend them to anyone who ask. Their support and product is the best I have ever used.
When I indicate not satisfying on the eBook question, that is because we just implemented eBooks through Overdrive in October and currently do not catalog those resources. And on the question of customer service, luckily, I do not have to contact Book Systems very often about issues. Whenever I do, they are always prompt and courteous. So that has not changed since we first implemented Atriuum.
We are very happy with Atriuum; Destiny was not built with the librarians in mind and customer service was poor, while BookSystems is going overboard to help. Pricing is also something to consider (especially with more and more databases being necessary) and Follett seems to not care about smaller library budgets. We would love to find a good discovery interface that is reasonably priced and works with all our database and ebook vendors, but none exist!
Our collection number now reflects the ebooks that are available to patrons and that do show up in our catalog.
Wish it was more for Public Libraries then School libraries. Reports are worded different. Not words that a public library would use.
I am often frustrated with the wait time on customer service requests when it is a minor issue. On major issues - they're very good. On minor issues, it could be a few days and they haven't always answered or fixed my issues.
There should be an option of "not applicable" for some of these questions (i.e. we don't have electronic resources to be managed, as of yet). I like most things about this system, which is very thorough.
We recently upgraded from Concourse to Atriuum. The transfer went well and they provided a day long training program for all volunteers
We just went live with Atrium by Book Systems in October 2014. To date, we are very satisfied with all aspects of the system.
We don't know what an open source ILS is. We just became apart of the North Texas Independent Digital Consortium.
Book System's Atriuum ILS is the absolute best system I have ever used. I have migrated three library systems to this product in the past eleven years.
We are very satisfied with Atriuum and have no plans to change.
We are a small library, so unfortunately we do not utilize all the features like we should. We are overall very satisfied with the product
I really like this automation software. Here is the reasons I like this software; easy to use, so easy to use I have not had to ask for help, manages the library circulation , reports, and database proficiently. I love the reports that I can generate. I can link any letter or report with the student database. I love that it is web based. I can work at home it I need to.
Our regional director is the one that makes the changes in our system or the one who the changes must originate through
ith my ILS system and its vendor. They have worked carefully with me to improve the system to meet my needs, and regularly communicate with me to learn how they can improve their product and their service. The staff at Book Systems are basically a part of my family.
When searching for a title sometimes you have to be too exact with the title to get a result. Other times you enter a title and get pages and pages for a result and spend too much time searching. That is our only complaint at this time.
There have been times when we have had trouble with the system. Times of slowness in going from page to page, finger scanner, sounds, and internet problems have occurred, some more than others. We usually can get this corrected with a phone call. But there re still times when the slowness of going from page to page causes a problem with checking out to our patrons.
I Love the personal service provided my Book Systems. I am Totally Satisfied
Atriuum automation system is the best to meet the requirements for reports, cataloging and fast reference.
Our patrons love the easy-to-use OPAC and its good looks. Our circulation efficiency is at an all-time high; the same is true of our cataloging. We are a very small library with only one MLS librarian -- Atriuum by Book Systems gives us the robust tools to serve our patrons well.
It is my understanding that a much updated and more useful version is available that would be even more effective and appreciated. It is free, we just need our technology coordinator to make the necessary changes.
I love Atriuum. It has been a blessing for Walters Public Library. If there is a problem of ANY KIND, I call and it gets solved within 3-4 hours, if they are very busy.
We upgraded to Atriuum at the end of last year and I love it. It functions well and our students are enjoying the OPAC and using the Atriuum app on their devices.
In the last year we've added more ebooks and downloadable audiobooks and recently Freegal.
We have had success with ATRIUUM.
Book Systems has been very responsive to any problems that we have encountered. We do not have our electronic resources integrated yet, but would like to have this done.
The Book Systems staff is always responsive to our requests. They are a small operation with very personal service at a cost small, rural libraries can afford.
my booksystems atriuum product is serving us well and they are improving the product all the time. We are very satisfied.
[...]
Book Systems is a great ILS vendor for small libraries. They are continuously improving the product. They actually listen to their customers. Their prices are excellent.
Don't know what "discovery interface" or "open Source" is. Have already purchased Atriuum, just waiting on conversion of records.
La puntuación de 0 es porque no tenemos contratado servicio de mantenimiento de la aplicación.
The largest public library in Norway, Deichman Public Library is implementing Koha by the end of 2015. That will probably mean a big shift in Norway and we expect that many libraries will change their ILS to Koha.
the product is superb but expensive if yo want to use all fascilities
CARL has really been making progress since the last survey. They actually got a new customer which makes the current user base more confident. While Broward has been a CARL customer for over 20 years, we are being forced to hire a consultant and depending on recommendations go out to bid.
We've been with the company before Follett bought it and been through Apple IIE, DOS, Windows 3.1 to current online and am very happy with it.
Cloud Libraries (NuGen) is operated by a single person. If he gets hit by a bus, we're toast.
Our automation system was chosen for its lower cost not for its features. I am researching with the hopes of finding a different system which will better meet our needs.
This system was in place when I arrived. To my knowledge Book Systems has been our only ILS vendor and no mention has been made of changing. We do not offer online electronic resources to our patrons (book renewal online?). We have been satisfied with Book Systems and Concourse, though there is more we could learn about the system.
I like the Concourse Module (turnkey system) however they seem to be investing morning interest and development into the Attrium Module (webbase system). I am unable to migrate at this time but I think they need to think about us who are still using Concourse.
I have been satisfied with the product but I am not very happy that the library has to pay $425 every year. I do not have a lot of problems so I do not request help often. When I did have a question, the response was complete.
You need a choice on your questionnaire of "not applicable" or something else that would be appropriate. For example, I have only been here three years, so I have no knowledge of the implementation of the ILS.
I would be greatly interested in purchasing Atrium for my library.
This system is old.
Not sure if it is a computer error or concourse error, but concourse only works when it wants to. I am constantly having to write students checkout information down due to concourse not opening up.
The unfortunate situation in Croatia with ILS (various local/domestic and international vendor ILS as well as open source ILS) is the result of absence of minimum of common ILS strategy - this blocks any serious attempt for development.
Current database integrates the archive materials and museum artifact collection. It is designed and maintained by a retired IS professional who is a member. Backup support is by another member, currently employed is IS. It is adequate for our current needs and resources.
CyberTools for Libraries offers a consistent, excellent product with outstanding client services. This company is always striving to build a better ILS system and always exceeds in doing so.
[...]
[Provided updated contact and collection details.]
We just migrated to Destiny over the summer of 2014 from Horizon, so we're still in the learning phase.
Destiny is a very good product. Follett is hosting this program for us. there are a few things that I am not happy with. Printing bar codes for books is not friendly and at this time you can not put book titles on them and the school name is too far above the bar code and gets cut off. Also this program is not as good as its predecessor circ+ in calculating fines. It is not flexible and I have lots of problems with it not calculating fines correctly.
would be nice to have a "n/a" option. Some of the questions were not applicable to our ils system.
New Student Management system is not meshing with Destiny. Newest upgrade still causing some difficulties, and still does not have clear "Help" directions. "Help" searching and directions are too narrow or too broad. Does not provide distinct instructions for entire process.
We are very new to Destiny, but, so far we are very pleased with it's features.
I am happy with my ILS software at this time. The decisions about what we use are handled by the district level Media and Instructional Technology Department.
Follett has open source products to search in their One Search and Universal search programs, I believe.
my problems are with our district as they supply most of the support. Destiny has been running so slow! It may be a server problem or not...
While taking this survey I needed to find the definition of Open Source. Based on what I read, I believe Open Source means that our catalog is available to all patrons in the district on site and off. If this is the actual definition then we do indeed have open source options through Destiny.
We have no electronic resources at this Elementary School Library. Decisions regarding upgrading, migrating, etc. are made at the High School Level.
While we are very satisfied with Follet and Destiny there are areas in which they could improve their product. I know they listen to their customers and use suggestions to upgrade the program but I also feel they could improve this process.
I find the reports in the Destiny system very limited. I also have issues trying to batch process patron and material records. This system was a replacement for InfoCentre. InfoCentre was much more user friendly.
While one of the newest features of Destiny, Universal Search, allows libraries to create and integrate local content that is stored on our server(s) and accessed through Destiny. We have no plans to use Universal Search in the near future. Two years ago, the library team was reduced from thirteen to seven. With a retirement in June 2014, that position was lost to attrition. Support staff has also been reduced from a total of seven to three full-time and one 5.5 hour per day position. I am retiring in January 2015 due to the changes made in my position this fall when I was staffed slightly more than half time in an elementary library. There has been no public discussion about whether my position as library/technology specialist will be retained. I don't believe that it will. I will keep following your research as I continue to look for a position more in line with my professional skill set and my passion for the use of technology in education.
The most important consideration is cost -- we will adapt as needed to the product that can do what we need at the lowest cost. We will consider adding a discovery interface when we have the funds that will allow us to consider implementing such a tool. This sounds contradictory because we will not consider an open source product, which is essentially free. However, we have had some good and some less-than-stellar experience with open source software, so I'm being cautious about using it for such a critical piece of our operation.
We like this system for print but its harder to add in digital resources that aren't purchased from Follett
Our District acts as the go-between with Destiny. As individual librarians, we do not really have control over the Big umbrella, either updates or installation.
Destiny is a product geared for school libraries, so it has functionality not relevant to our public library, while missing functionality we'd like to see.
Follett is the 4th software I managed and the first to focus on K-12 schools. It is a pleasure working with a company that puts our needs first.
Have always had great results with Follett
The current ILS system was chosen based on cost and time restraints, but in my opinion it was a poor choice. It lacks certain features we want like being able to look up what people have read in the past, it was aimed at schools not public libraries, and it can be buggy sometimes.
We had the option to join our library system's [...] but chose to remain a stand alone system. We like the system we are on. It serves our needs at this time.
We are not happy with ProQuest Summon. We found after purchase that we had to have a proxy server for the 360 Link Resolver to work. We are stuck in a three year contract.
Follett's Assets Manager is an inventory program for computers, ipads, equipment. Schools are purchasing this manager instead of Textbook manager based upon the 1-1 computer initiative.
We just implemented the Destiny system, so the question about customer service being worse or better I can't really be sure of. The change from Horizon to Destiny has been pretty smooth. Am I the only one on your list? I am only one of 33 librarians in my district.
Overall generally satisfied with vendor and product.
Five campuses use Destiny but I answered the survey questions based only on our public community library use.
We are a non-circulating research library that houses primarily special collections materials and rare books. It's difficult to find a proper ILS that doesn't have circulatory functions, and Open Source materials are looking like the superior option. However, finding an Open Source ILS system that doesn't require programming knowledge, SQL, or other interfacing experience is also a difficult task. I'm currently considering making a slapdash cataloging system out of Google documents, sheets, and forms and seeing how that runs alongside a temporary OCLC membership. Oh, yeah, none of the stuff in my library has ever been fully cataloged in 80 years aside from the materials in the reading room, which were done (mostly incorrectly) on Follett Destiny software, and given book labels for circulation that doesn't happen.
Is this survey about open source? I have a strong opinion. As part of a consortium (the school and public library) our libraries used sagebrush. When sagebrush was sold to Follett, the Libraries migrated to Evergreen, an open source ILS. The open source ILS was terrible for the school library. It worked fine for the public library, with a staff of 9 to manage all the different elements of making the program run. At the school it's just me. The public library did not give me the support needed to make Evergreen work in the school. Because of this, the school library left the consortium. It wasn't easy. But I am much happier with Follett. Being the only staff in the library I needed an ILS that was going to be easier for myself and the students. I needed support (something not offered by Evergreen). Open source it not free. It ended up costing twice as much as Follett. With a limited budget it made sense to switch to something that would cost less and be more efficient.
This system was not chosen by current director, who would have done a lot of research before choosing. The circulation system is designed for schools and very few public libraries in Iowa use it.
Just wish Follett Destiny was more public library oriented instead of school oriented.
We recently migrated from 250+ individual servers on campuses to a union catalog using the Destiney ILS and Follett has gone above and beyond helping us with this radical transformaiton!
It will be appropriate for follett to get someone to do the installation or visit their clients to check if it's well done, especially those in Africa region. Follett has not made much in impact in Africa especially Ghana. AlMost all the institution who bought it has serious challengers.
Destiny is very friendly and easy to use on the patron side. However, on the librarian side, and especially the first year after the initial conversion, the back office does not offer utilities that easily clean up issues. The barcode and spine label printing process is still limited by the Adobe configuration settings (cannot change font, or alignment on barcodes). I am also finding it difficult to generate reports that contain only the information I need.
The number of items in our collection is district-wide - among 4 libraries. The biggest drawback of this ILS is the report feature. Getting the desired information is often very cumbersome and the end report is often not visually user-friendly. Also there is no way I know of to track the number of times an e-book is accessed through the ILS. Maybe there is a way to do this report, but since the report system is so cumbersome, the only way I could find out would be to call their tech. services. But the system is very reliable in terms of managing the print resources and equipment in our libraries so overall it functions well.
Follett in a great system for schools, but not very accommodating for small rural public libraries, especially with providing reports for the year end, very cumbersome, if they are going to sell the public libraries, they should create reports to support them.
Will try to send # items in library's collection separately. Excellent working relationship with our core team at Follette
It is very update in everithing related to the state of the art of Linked Open Data
La empresa que mantiene la biblioteca es DIGIBIS
We are in the final stages of negotiating a contract with SirsiDynix to upgrade to Symphony. We had to keep using "Dynix Classic" because of financial problems and lack of funding.
OCLC has been a fantastic organisation to work for and getting us a catalogue visible if not linked to LMS has been a large step forward for us. The support for this process was amazing.
We are a public library using a system from a company whose focus has changed over the years, from serving all libraries to serving special libraries. We no longer fit their profile of the typical customer. This has caused many misunderstandings, particularly concerning confidentiality.
We were dubious when EOS was acquired by Sirsi. At this point, the jury's still out, which is why the reviews are less than excellent. The customer support people we had always worked with, and who always came through for us, seem to have disappeared. Their replacements have yet to prove themselves (e.g. we requested a rebuild and we're still trying to make it work). If I had to put out an RFP again EOS would be on the list, but certainly not so near the top as it was before. The real test will come in a few years' time, when the contract is up for renewal.
We have used EOS for over 20 years. The vendor is very customer service oriented and their support staff have always been very responsive, communicative. Clients hold their own gathering to discuss the ILS and the vendor continues to be open to suggestions for improving or adding functionality to their ILS.
We maintain electronic resources separate from our ILS by plan. This scenario is more effective in information literacy instruction,
We are currently working on migrating from a local install to vendor hosted solution. On premises installations are becoming unsustainable. We are also seriously considering ditching the ILS entirely for a CMS, since the ILS provides much expensive functionality that we don't use, and isn't as good at managing digital content, or sharing our data as we would like.
EOS was purchased by Sirsi Dynix this year and already service has significantly deteriorated. We are uneasy about the future annual pricing with Sirsi Dynix and the unreasonable cost of adding additional users.
I am still uncovering issues related to importing our records into the system. Reporting is very difficult to work with.
Some of my dissatisfaction rests with my ability to accomplish what I want and that is not necessarily at the fault of the ILS vendor.
We have been very pleased w/EOS, especially their support.
Our problem with EOS is primarly related to cost, and their inflexibility in being willing to renegoiate our contract after we bought more than we need or use.
We are implementing more electronic materials over time. I expect the number of items to decrease substantially over the next few years.
We are very happy with EOS International, although there have been several very frustrating issues since its acquisition. I am hopeful EOS International's policies and work with the Library community will win out.
My only concern about EOS is that they were purchased from Sirsi/Dynix this past year. We left Sirsi/Dynix to go to EOS as we were unhappy with their support and the cost. Am hoping that Sirsi/Dynix will not do to EOS as they did to DRA and others they have acquired (discontinued them and increased the costs).
EOS International was acquired by SirsiDynix earlier this year and our license was recently up for renewal. This prompted a serious analysis of options to renew or move to a different platform or product set. In the end, the EOS product offering proved to continue to be the best fit. EOS and SirsiDynix also were very good at answering questions about product life, support services, and account management.
Serials management was not covered in the survey. EOS.Web is great for print and electronic materials, customer support is great too. The serials module is somewhat problematic, however.
[...]
By now, for security reasons [...] cannot consider open source options.
I was pleasantly surprised that I could use the EOS cataloging module with my personal iPad, and I did that while on an Amtrak bus that was equipped with wifi, while departing from ALA, heading from Las Vegas to Bakersfield. This hasn't been an advertised feature, i.e. a client server model with an ultra thin client and a database in the cloud. I'm populating VuFind with weekly updates done during a Friday night data export. The export takes about 45 minutes, it takes about ten minutes to massage that data with a python script and then about 30 minutes for VuFind to import it. We are using VuFind's NoILSs driver to show holdings, meaning we don't show live circulation status.
The vendor has always been very good about customer service and solving problems but they were recently sold to Sirsi so I do not know if this will continue under the new company.
We still have some conversion issues remaining from the legacy software that the current software is unable to resolve. EOS tends to add functionality and options without providing enough opportunity to figure out how the new functionality/options will change OPAC appearance or even workflow. Odd bugs continue to surface, though the support team handles complaints more effectively than before. New modules that may be useful are almost prohibitively expensive for our budget. Serial holdings display remains rudimentary.
We have had some concerns about EOS being acquired by Sirsi Dynix, but so far the prices have been reasonable. Nevertheless, due to some technical issues, particular in Acquisitions, we have asked OCLC to provide a quote for Worldshare.
Very good enhancement program based on client submissions and updates installed monthly.
I did not respond at all to the 4th question (re: how effective is the ILS at managing our electronic resources) because the [...] Library Program office does not manage digital resources. Digital assets management is distributed across several other major [...] program areas. In addition, the [...] Library Program has no funding for other electronic library resources, such as site-licensed database subscriptions (we rely on DOI Library for access to full text journal databases and laws and regs), and [...] libraries have not yet gotten into purchase of ebooks.
It's important for those reading our responses to be aware that the majority of the 400+ libraries in the [...] are not managed by an MLS librarian, nor is it typical that there is anyone consistently in charge. The usual park library situation is one of a revolving door, very part time, care-taking function, with some exceptions. It is all they can do to get the collections cataloged, which involves our training park staff or volunteers to catalog using the [...] ILS.
Because park libraries, by and large, do not have much in the way of collection development funds or budgets for ongoing serial subscriptions, and because parks are lacking in personnel with skill sets required to use the EOS.Web Acquisitions and Serials modules, none of the libraries in the system uses them, including the rare MLS librarian. And only three libraries have the skill sets and the circulation volume (most [...] libraries are for staff use only) to warrant investment of time in using the EOS Circ module.
We also don't yet use the Content Aggregator (RSS Feed utility) module, or the Reference Tracker module -- both of which were included in our purchase package -- but we hope to leverage those once we get another librarian on staff (we currently have only 1.4 FTE in the [...] Library Program office, which includes my position). I make mention of all of this because my responses are primarily within the context of the Cataloging, OPAC and Maintenance modules. I don't want to give the impression that we are endorsing the whole EOS.Web Enterprise enchilada when we are using only a portion of it.
I also wanted to explain my reason for giving 8's instead of 9's for the product; it's because in spite of all of the strengths and really wonderful features, the product is weak (in my view) with respect to provision of truly useful shelf list options as well as flexibility vis-a-vis the library labels report (e.g., although it uses a standard format, the vendor can only confirm that the program works with one supplier -- a minor one -- and certain settings are enterprise-wise only, like whether to enable printing of Call Number Prefix values to label sets).
These are both very basic requirements and fundamental to effective management of print materials (only a handful of libraries barcode, so we very much rely on well formatted shelf lists with just the information needed and no more, vs. an abundance of information, or a brief report missing a few critical data elements, vs. an excel output format that isn't truly Excel, etc.). We don't even use any of the shelf list reports but created a workaround using the Cataloging Detail report.
In sum, though, we are very happy with the product -- the EasyMARC option for original cataloging is critical for our situation (e.g., in that we have so many libraries and so few professional librarians) and the ability to customize the OPAC Discover interface via templates and drag and drop is really nice -- no Web design or HTML skills whatsoever are required to make a really nice looking portal interface that is distinctive and dynamic.
Most of all all, the Client Services team is absolutely super!! It's also awesome to get new releases on a monthly basis that are seamlessly implemented (if using the vendor-hosted EOS.Web SaaS option, as we are), accompanied by monthly free webinars reviewing new features, as well as monthly focus group and advanced virtual cataloging webinars covering particular areas in-depth, based on EOS user community request.
The latest addition to the Client Service Team's monthly webinar series is a 15 minute 'shortcuts series' wherein workflows for a few different operations are touched upon at a fairly high level, which has been very helpful. Plus, with the acquisition of EOS by Sirsi-Dynix last year, there's a new Case management platform, which is wondeful. And the EOS software and client data was moved to Sirsi's data center (an outsourced function) for which FEDRAMP certification is pending, which is critical for those of us who are fed agencies.
We love EOS!! They are so responsive to the needs of special libraries (their major strength, I feel) and have the best Client Services team I've experienced in my entire professional career. Fortunately, the new parent company seems to be doing all the right things -- staying invisible to us, not affecting the EOS culture (very professional but folksy), but infusing EOS with added resources.
We are very happy with our move to open-source Evergreen. The lower ratings reflect the fact that improvements are needed and still under development for newer modules, such as acquisitions and reports. Patrons and staff are very happy with the circulation module and catalog.
We have been with Equinox for a very long time and I am consistently impressed with the level of service they provide.
Currently, we are waiting to do an upgrade to Evergreen. We need better tech support, and are looking at other possible sources for that.
As a library we are still getting use to Evergreen. Being a small library the patrons just find it a lot more easier to just ask us if we have the books they are looking for.
We experience services outages at least 2-3 times a week, and sometimes multiple times in a day. The vendor usually gets us back up fairly quickly, but these constant disruptions are frustrating for staff and the public. It affects not only the catalog and circ, it also affects electronic resources. It's difficult to judge customer support because we are part of a consortium and there are layers between us and the vendor. Also, it is sometimes difficult to know if the problems we experience are because of the product itself or something in the consortial settings.
We installed Evergreen in September of 2010. Very challenging implementation, but over the course of the past year, our ability to support and enhance the system has really evolved. We are very happy with the system. Our staff doesn't want to change. All customer support related responses above refer to our own technology staff and the vendors we contract with for specialized application development and database and operating system support. We are able to make needed changes to maintain performance of the system in very effective and timely ways. We have developed a fully functional Authority system for Evergreen using the bones of what was already there in the community code. We are in a good position now where we will be able to effectively give back our changes to the Evergreen Community for the benefit of other libraries running the system. With respect to effectively providing online content and materials, we are in the same licensing and digital rights dilemma that faces other libraries, but as solutions are found, we will be able to effectively modify Evergreen and its associated interfaces to improve access for the public. Basically, Evergreen has gone from a weakness to a strength and we are very happy with the system in general relative to the needs of running a library system of our size.
Evergreen has been a great move for us, allowing us to control our future, our services and our costs.
I have been in the [...] system since 1999; it has improved over the years, but not adequately. We continue to have blips in service, problems with growth. Acquisitions and fund accounting function are non-existent. it's lagging in development. How much of that is the [...] team vs the EG people is hard to know.
My personal opinion, Evergreen-Equinox was not as smooth an ILS as our pervious ILS Virtua-VTLS. Many of the options were not available to us, however in a 5 month period Equinox was able to bring to usmany of the option missing
Unfortunately, this survey is geared toward proprietary ILS users. Evergreen is an open source ILS. For this reason, a variety of support companies are available to assist in the migration to and maintenance of the ILS. This also allows us to have local "experts" who provide robust 1st tier support so that it's often difficult to gauge any improvements or drop-offs from 2nd tier support. Hopefully, future surveys will be more inclusive of libraries already using open source ILS solutions.
We moved from Lyrasis to Equinox in July 2014 and I can't say enough good things about Equinox. They respond quickly and with thorough explanation of the issue. [...]
An open source ILS software is only as good as the people in charge of adapting it to the library using it.
Our library and our library's consortia are active in developing improvements to the open source ILS.
Most of these questions cannot be answered because we do not deal directly with vendor. We are part of a library system that makes these decisions.
Comments about the "company" are for our local consortium, [...]. [...]has a support contract with Equinox Software, but the library does not deal with Equinox directly.
For the first time in its 120-year history, the Library joined a consortium, [...] , a little over a year ago. The transition from our previous ILS, Library.Solution to [...] ILS, Evergreen, went mostly smoothly. As the person here responsible for technology, who understands best how horribly a transition like this could have gone, I was impressed, and continue to be impressed, with the consortium's management and with our open source ILS, Evergreen. Given the complexity which a consortial ILS must necessarily maintain, I have been well satisfied with Evergreen's performance.
This library does not have any electronic resources. It might be more helpful if libraries were permitted to contact customer support directly rather than through a third party.
Adding the eAudiobooks, etc approx. number of items in the library's collection is: 66300
Currently have Evergreen which is open source. No plan to change ILS. The network/consortium [... ] provides the direct service and interfaces with Evergreen. We are satisfied with this arrangement. The system was installed in 2013 - a delay of approx. 6 months.
The above number of items does not include our e-resources.
We are satisfied with our product and vendor.
[...]
I have worked in this library for less than one year, and do not have sufficient background information to answer all the questions.
[...] is self-hosted by the community of members, via the[...]
Although we are happy with the ILS it does have some quirks that are annoying. Report features are complex and on almost needs to have a tech-librarian on staff.
Reporting could be improved
InfoVision Technology continues to provide exemplary service whenever a question or problem has occurred. They have successfully resolved patron upload issues with an E=Book vendor when the E-Book vendor shuffled our staff member from one department to another merely resending the same failed instructions. The Evolve ILS system meets the needs of our small public library and customer support exceeds most companies we do business with.
We are very happy with our ILS local rep and service. The functionality and speed of the actual ILS is only moderate. But I haven't used another one in over 10 years now so maybe I am just getting tired of it! We will stay with this group until our local rep retires; then will rethink changing.
Good value for a small library. Would like future app.
Horizon has been a great system to work with over the years, and it is with regret that we will need to shortly move to another system. However, with e-resources now forming a prominent part of our collections we need workflows to deal much more effectively with online information.
[...] is currently a [...] beta site for Intota
I'm concerned about AquaBrowser's lack of ongoing development. The support is fine, but despite a long phone conversation a year or two ago about what enhancements we would like to see, nothing has happened. We went from an in-house server to SaaS this past year, which provided a couple of small enhancements but that has been it since we first installed it in 2008.
We are using their remotely hosted option, SaaS, software as a service. This is working very well for us. They are responsible for backups and updates. We can focus on other things than running ILS servers.
The relationship with SirsiDynix has greatly improved across time. The only feature I haven't implemented with them is the mobile version of the Opac because it would be an additional cost. However, I am negotiationg for OCLC WMS. Ther most serious reason for adopting specifically this product (if we'll be able to obtain it at a reasonable price), beyond reputation and reliability, is that it would let us make serious improvements in the workflow (most of our cataloging is on Connexion).
We will be replacing our ILS hardware early in 2015. Implementing a virtualized system.
Our current installation of Horizon works quite well and does the job. The work involved in preparing for the tender process, product selection and implementation of a possible new software is costly and time consuming. Staff, time and money that we do not have at the moment. The recent announcement by SirsiDynix to implement a BLUECloud product suite gives me optimism that we would be able to get a web based software within the terms of our current support agreement. The funds saved will be used towards more important student success initiatives.
Would like to explore open source options, but limited due to Consortial arrangement and governance/IT structure.
The company has committed to continuing development of Horizon which is good news.
Horizon was a good system for its time, but now it has fallen behind. SirsiDynix does their best to support it for us, but it just needs to be put out of its misery.
Consortium arrangement - we are a smaller partner in this consortium
We are pondering an ILS migration in 2016. Considering the shifting marketplace, we don't know which vendors/products we would consider. However, a possible list would include SirsiDynix Symphony, Polaris, Sierra, and Virtua from Innovative Interfaces, asn well as WorldShare from OCLC. Considering the recent spate of acquisitiions by Innovative, we cannot predict which products will actually be offered in two years.
The product is pretty good - stable etc. However, it's overkill for us now. Being a special library our collection has shrunk considerably, particularly the physical collection. We keep 2 paper-based serials which does not justify keeping the serials module (and so we've saved over $1,000 this year by not having that!). I do like the EDS - how it brings together various library systems and subscriptions under one blanket search.
Use of the vendor's SAS is under consideration.
Much of this is handled at the Regional level vs our local library.
SirsiDynix offers a lot of new product enhancements for their ILS, but we have not been able to afford all that we have wanted.
Support from SD is quite limited. they are obviously very good at 'talking the talk' however not so good when it comes to supplying products or updates. I've been involved with them for several years and any time there was an upgrade something major went wrong that meant a drastic change in branch processes. They were never able to address these and fixes had to wait until the next upgrade release. They continually 'sell' things that are innovative, however are constantly delaying product releases. These products come with a substantial price tag, which also makes one think twice. When we are faced with IT restrictions for various reasons, having to constantly try and sell changes and upgrades to upper management based on what this vendor tells us, which is then delayed yet again, makes us look extremely unprofessional and undermines our credibility.
We are mostly satisfied with Horizon, but we keep an eye on other options. Staff know how to use Horizon, though, and the OPAC works fine (mostly) for our patrons. SD is offering better mobile device support, and we're looking into that, as well. As a law library (heavy serials module use, plus we also use Acquisitions heavily), we are not seeing much in terms of Open Source products that would be useful for our purposes. We consider whether we may need to migrate to a different product, but at this point, we are not seeing anything that looks much better. That may change over time, although SD has become more responsive to their Horizon libraries these days. Some time ago, they kept threatening to stop supporting horizon. I think the investors started realizing that this wasn't feasible (eg, to push a lot of libraries to migrate all at once).
We can do most of what we want to do with Horizon works, but have run into situations with other SirsiDynix products such as Enterprise that have more functionality with Symphony.
Consortia e-book collections in addition to local collection
While Horizon out of the box earned some mediocre marks in the first few questions (functionality, essentially), we generally love the system because it has a very open back end which we have leveraged with extensive in-house application development. Our enhanced version of Horizon actually meets our needs very well.
[...]
This response is not from a library, but from a consortium office representing [...] institutions and their libraries.
[...]
[...] is part of [...] shared system (3,438,099 items) which is fairly committed to migrate to Evergreen in late 2015/early 2016.
[...]
May switch to new vendor
As a hosted system we have had great support from SirsiDynix. This year, because of a very good offer from our vendor, we upgraded to the Enterprise catalog and integrated our digital content with their eReference product. My only real complaint is that they have been extremely slow in their rollout of new products.
The Republic of Ireland is about to implement a national LMS. Sierra has been chosen, and a contract has been signed.
Following a recent visit from our Horizon representative, we found that Horizon had been greatly enhanced and much more user friendly. Customer support is improving, as well.
We are disappointed with the lack of support that we have received from OCLC in the management of their WorldCat Local discovery system. This experience, coupled with what seems to be fairly frequent down times, has given us pause and is hindering our ability to confidently move ahead with WMS.
The company has been slow to address some of their issues related to functionality, but are now showing signs of developing software that will improve functionality across both main platforms. This looks promising and we hope this is a sign of the company has been listening to the concerns of libraries. The only issue will be if they price new functionality to high for the majority of libraries to be able to purchase it.
As our budget continues to shrink it has become critical to evaluate our ILS and the maintenance costs associated with it. We also have had the same ILS vendor since 1991, since that time, many more vendors and products are available and we need to investigate what's out there.
Individual customer support staff are great to work with; however, overall product development and fixing of known issues is a very cumbersome and slow process.
Great working relationship with [...] who handles the SirsiDynix Horizon issues
SirsiDynix has been very slow to implement promised changes with their BlueCloud web based services.
The closest we have to a "discovery interface" is NoveList with Goodreads. We are not likely to move to an open source ILS because we have a branch at a correctional facility where a threat & risk assessment must be done on the ILS. It takes a VERY long time for this and open source is probably not considered as secure as what we have now.
The library looks forward to upgrading the ILS, but has had local obstacles to overcome in order to move forward.
We just upgraded to Horizon 7.52 and HIP 3.23
[...]
We also have a second ILS, Ever Team's Loris.but will soon migrate the base to the Horizon one.
Horizon est un très bon produit pour gérer les ressources imprimés mais il ne sait pas gérer les ressources électroniques. Nous avons donc un projet de réinformatisation pour passer à un SGB de nouvelle génération dans le cloud.
ProQuest 's team for Summon is very responsive and quick moving. But there are many problems. It feels like they are trying to do the Google thing and just make changes and fixes on the fly, but they don't usually have a bug-free implementation. They jump on the problems, but they always have problems. It gives an uncertain/unstable feeling when other things constantly go wrong from a "fix" to what seems like a separate problem. Feels like a lack of planning. It is a good company and they seem to be giving it the right amount of resources and doing a lot of good things, but it's been very uneven. I expect they will get their balance, but it's been bumpy. SirsiDynix is more deliberate but moving in a good direction moving things over to Cloud based products.
InfoCentre is not being developed. It already has glitches working with Win7 clients and now Server 2003 is also being put out to pasture by Microsoft. The company line is that it was built for 2003 and they don't know if it will work with a newer server.
InfoCentre hasn't been developed for several years. Other than reports and the public catalog it has been a useable product that even still is preferable for circulation and cataloging over the products we are considering. We are looking for the best fit for our small (650 patrons, about 75000 items, two sites) setup. Atriuum is attractive for support and features as long we ignore Authorities, Serials and Acquisition modules - it has them but at additional cost. Koha is intriguing and has all the modules added, but it is complex and I worry if our chosen partner (Equinox) would really give adequate support. We don't have figures for Worldshare yet, but its features are very attractive. Really would like to ask if there were other likely systems we should explore.
Insignia is not user friendly; not intuitive to use Customer support is not helpful; not confident representative understands our questions; we are often confused by representatives answers; user manual procedures for performing certain tasks does not match what we actually work with in the program. Software does not work well on Chrome. Insignia told us it works best on Explorer. Library Media Techs received Mac Book Pros last year that the district did not put Explorer on because they wanted to use Chrome or Firefox.
La biblioteca está trabajando en la publicación de sus bases de datos en la Web con una OPAC de ABCD; a la vez, a partir de 2015, se planifica hacer la migración de todos los procesos y automatizar los de gestión de la colección y transacciones, aún no realizados en forma automatizada
to add harvesting of data as a first step
Great open source product for our series of small, networked, special libraries on tight budgets. Management vendor is proactive, helpful and easy-going, which makes life for those of us who are a little less tech savvy so much easier!
Koha est utilisé avec un webservice vers la base de connaissance Mirabel pour les informations sur les revues électroniques (accès au texte intégral)
Although our migration has been less than smooth; indeed, it is infested with bugs, we still do not regret moving to Koha and leaving Horizon.
I believe that because the open source company we selected after a rigorous RFP process that because the ILS company had 68 new customers the support was stretched too thin. The company could not grow fast enough to accommodate.
Until we get high speed broadband, any web-based systems are not going to perform as well as proprietary programs installed on a local server.
We have only been using Koha for less than a month so other than commenting on Bywater support these questions are hard for me to answer. I will have more experience with the ILS in next year's survey.
I feel that the KOHA ILS still lacks some basic functionality in terms of patron interface and staff functionality, specifically the accounting module/charging patrons for lost books and creating financial reports. My patrons and I both find the patron interface difficult to use and understand. This has gotten better over the 6 years we've used KOHA but I still believe this lack of intuitive design is a barrier for most patrons. I am very happy with Bywater's migration services and would be happy to recommend them to others.
In response to the question, Where does the library direct most of its ILS support issues?, I chose ILS vendor even thought I don't consider Bywater Solutions the vendor for Koha. But they are our ILS support company, so I thought that was the closest correct answer to the question.
We have been very pleased with Koha as implemented and supported by ByWater Solutions. However, it only houses our print book collection, not our digital resources. We use our website and a CMS (Expression Engine) to manage those.
We have been using Koha from Bywater. The last "upgrade" not only did not improve things that we heard were going to be better, but broke the system so that it is much less useful. While I loved the idea of "open source", in fact we are paying a lot for a marginally useful system. In particular, none of our Overdrive titles show up in the catalog, we have constant problems with checkins, overdues no longer show in red, and when we are checking out, new checkouts show at the bottom of the list, so that it is hard to know which have actually gone through. The servers are very slow, and we have had several occasions when they do not work at all.
We are migrating in December 2014 to Apollo. These answers are in relation to our installation of Koha as supported by ByWater.
There have been bugs with each upgrade of our open sources software but they get resolved right away.
Koha is an excellent product. 1/3 of the cost for maintenence than other ILS support vendors. Customization, Support, and product far superior to any ILSes we have used in the past. I highly recomment Koha supported by ByWater for any library thinking of migrating from another vendor!
We already have an open source ILS Koha, hosted by Bywater Solutions and have been very pleased with the system, migration, and customer support
Koha is growing very rapidly in features. This is causing some problems with how well the features are working. Our vendor, ByWater Solutions is increasing it's customer base so much that they have a hard time giving the level of customer service we have come to expect.
I am a new director and some of the answers may be wrong in the interpretation of the question.
Koha is an open sourse ILS
Overall -- very satisfied with both the software and the support vendor.
We use Bywater Solutions Koha. It works very well. Though without our own programmers it sometimes can seem like working with a typical vendor.
[...]
Koha is an Open Source ILS.
The Koha ILS is great. Its interface presents a very easy learning curve for anyone familiar with using popular websites such as google, amazon, ebay, etc. It being open source means that the community can customize it, and we have benefited from this. I can't imagine us moving to another ILS. As far as our vendor, ByWater Solutions, they are great. Their service request system is simple to use. They respond to issues quickly. An added bonus, is that they have Nicole Engard on staff, the writer of the Koha manual. I can't stress enough how confidence inspiring it is to me to have some of my support issues handled by her.
Koha is a constantly evolving organism. Improvements are being made all the time. The community really does respond to the needs of its constituency. With that being said, there is still a long ways to go until Koha is an equal with the likes of Innovative Interfaces. But then, you get what you pay for, and Koha through ByWater is the right amount of "Bang for the buck" for us. ...and things keep getting better and more robust. ByWater does a great job for us and I hope they keep it up. I also hope that some of the cataloging functionality in Koha will soon be improved so I can better manage our e-resources (batch deletions and edits specifically) [I've heard rumors that something might be in the works.]
We recently switched to Koha by ByWater Systems and we've been very pleased with the process. Their tech support has responded to our questions quickly.
Customer service has always been prompt and courteous. The question regarding whether it has gotten better or worse was hard to answer, because the customer service has been great since we first contracted with Bywater.
Bywater Solutions have done a great job in transferring us from Athena to Koha during July-August, 2014, and we are very satisfied with their maintenance of our system on their servers as well as their swift, efficient responses to our many queries since we "went live" with Koha on August 25.
ByWater Solutions has great customer support.
So far, so good. I have just released it to the staff (users) and they seem happy with it.
We are using Koha ILS that is designed for use with multiple branches, not independent members of a consortium. The functionality far, far surpasses anything Follett (prior vendor) has ever offered and improvements are constantly being made. However, sometimes upgrades introduce new bugs and that can be very frustrating. Also, this "group" Koha system can be very difficult for circ desk staff/volunteers that are not very tech savvy. It has been my observation that Bywater responds quickly to any problem that can be addressed.
Koha is okay from the opac side although the default display is weirdly bad (eg. do I really need to ask for subfields to be displayed for X00 tags?) and the search engine is extremely poor. On the cataloging side, it is a huge pain to work with.
Koha's reporting is awful. Difficult to use and not efficient. Since last update, it is very slow.
Cataloging new materials with this system can be tricky. For example, the format types displayed on the front end do not match the options available on the back end's cataloging tool -- and the back end only offers four options (books, CD-ROMs, continuing resources, and web resources). This has made it difficult to catalog DVDs.
The biggest challenge with the Koha ILS is the functionality of the acquisitions module. Luckily, ByWater is supportive and help us work through the glitches there. In terms of electronic resource management Koha doesn't provide that. We use EBSCO's ERM product for managing those resources.
I recommend ByWater Solutions to any library that is considering a hosted Koha implementation. Their customer service and dedication to the development of the ILS is really top-notch, and they definitely care about their customers' wants, needs and feedback about Koha.
Just migrated to [...] Koha [...] in September 2014 - They upgraded the system in October 2014.
Switching to open source community Koha from the proprietary PTFS/Liblime koha-based ILS was a great improvement. The migration through Bywater Solutions went quite smoothly. Because of our terrible experience with the Liblime product, we would have switched to a commercial ILS if our library could have afforded to do so. Open-source Koha works much better than our previous system, but it lacks some of the features and search precision which is available in most traditional ILS systems.
Koha is a good ILS, but the search functionality is not up to our needs. We know that at some point int he not too distant future Zebra will be replaced with Elastic Search, and we are looking forward to this. For a special research library, the current search functionality is frustrating. As to service, during our migration I was concerned ByWater might be overextended. They insisted they are not. We did not get good timely responses to our inquiries. This is an oddball library, and ByWater's "trust us - we know how to do this, so do it our way" approach didn't work well for us. We needed a different process, and we could not get it. I discussed this at length after migration with ByWater, and I think they understood my complaints and took them to heart. Didn't help us, of course, but I hope it helps someone else.
Bywater Solutions has lagged the last year in addressing development requests. We had 2 that were in hiatus for a year. But I did not follow up or push the issue forward once the request was submitted.
Koha is an excellent ILS for a library of this size, but it would be helpful if we had a dedicated tech person who could work more closely with ByWater to fix bugs, etc. when they come up. I think that there's a language gap between programmers and non-programmers, and we don't always communicate very effectively. The everyday functioning of the ILS is wonderful (if slow). Trying to make changes is where I run into trouble. It can be difficult to figure out how to do things in Koha on your own and it can be difficult to find help with the little things that come up. For example, I was trying to add authorized values to the Location field and it took me the better part of a day to figure out how to do it or where to look for help on how to do it.
[...] Our support vendor is Bywater and they are excellent.
System is JUST being implemented and has not yet been used "live."
Though Catalyst is very fast in responding to service requests and their customer service is fantastic, we have found their prices high and we have to pay for requests we expect would be covered by our standard service level agreement.
Koha has been the most painless/seamless LMS that I have used, over the last 35 years.
Koha open source product is stable, with annual updates, and provides more functionality than we need, especially OPAC integration of other resources. Equinox support and hosting is reliable, professional and prompt.
For question 3, we do not use the ILS to its fullest due to lack of staff time to adopt new methods. For question 4, we have OverDrive connected through our catalogue, but we have not tried to implement other resources. I put a 5 because it is fairly effective for its purposes of ebooks, but that is where we have stopped exploring. Hmm articles etc could be interesting to get through there, but I don't know that something like summon would actually be effective because I don't know that people often want that much information. At UWO, Summon was implemented and even students looking for books and articles were inundated and completely overwhelmed. Also, we contact other libraries vs our vendor simply because we have not had many big issues. They have all been minor "How do you do this" questions. Only once have we had to contact the vendor and the issue was fixed within about 10 minutes.
Estamos en fase inicial de la catalogación en koha, abordando por el momento solamente LIBROS en papel, Además de Scire trabajamos con otras dos empresas: Conocimiento Práctico, como intermediario-mediador y con [...] , para la catalogación
We did not use a vendor for our ILS. We installed it ourselves with the help of a knowledgeable volunteer.
Some questions cannot be appropriate to our situation, since we manage the Koha installation only with internal HR, without the help of any vendor.
Please note that the library is using a self-hosted version of an open-source ILMS and therefore the questions relating to vendor and support are not applicable.
Since I installed Koha by myself with advice from the Koha discussion list, some of the questions don't apply. I have also modified Koha's templates to use it as a local authors catalog using Medline records. MAC-MLA thought this was sufficiently interesting to accept my poster presentation at their 2014 meeting. I find Koha easy to use, easy to set up, and easy to run.
Our system has not been upgraded appropriately, and now, our local holdings information is extremely difficult to update or migrate. We are working on having Koha 3.14 or better up and running for Fall 2015.
software muy robusto
I skipped a lot of questions because we use an open-source ILS (Koha) that is managed in-house. (We purchased our server, but I set up the ILS and I am "customer support.") We also don't use our ILS to manage electronic resources at this time.
Many of the above questions were not applicable as we are currently using an open source ILS, Koha. The Library Director and the Systems Network Consultant for the [...] completed the conversion and provide most of the support for the ILS. We also access the Koha community for resources.
The Koha open source community continues to impress. We are very please with our ILS and have no plans to look elsewhere.
We manage the open source Koha system by ourselves. [...] Support comes from the Koha developers community.
[...] has it's own IT team support for providing system implementation support to software issue handling as well as research on newer technologies. So, technically we never provisioned any third party for implementing the software rather we simply acquired the source codes from the respective websites and did the rest on our own.
All development, maintenance etc is conducted "in-house" -- no outside contractors/vendors have ever been used.
Our technical support found that open source software requires more input than the School's budget allows for, so problems are not speedily fixed. I, on the other hand love Koha, but if we changed it would not be to another open source product.
We have just implemented KOHA from CDS/ISIS by converting data through MARC EDIT and also support from the KOAH Community.
We have recently migrated and we are still adapting.
We implemented Koha ourselves without a vendor, and with some wonderful assistance on the part of other Koha users who answered questions and helped us troubleshoot.
Some items were left blank because our library is already using Koha, an open source ILS that we maintain internally. Libraries are in the forefront of change. Financial, organizational, service delivery, product management, and client interaction. Changes are happening radically and frequently that buying a typical OTS ILS is no longer practical.
I believe KOHA has the ability to meet our needs very well, but our IT person has installed it and does the work on it. For some reason he has not been able to get KOHA to automatically re-index, so at times we have 6 months of new materials that do not show up when they are searched for.
The [...] Library already uses Koha which is an open source Library system
Actualmente ya no se utiliza este sistema de gestión en los [...].
Nuestro SIGB es de código abierto y el soporte se ofrece a través de un foro electrónico sobre bibliotecas y documentación en el que intervienen otras bibliotecas y los responsables del proyecto Koha-Kobli del Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte de España.
One of the best things about the ILS we use is the fact that it is administered by a library consortium as opposed to a for-profit vendor. In my opinion, librarians need to do more to take control of the products needed to provide service to our communities. In a profit environment we end up with expensive, less than desirable products such as Overdrive.
LibLime Academic Koha is the version of Koha we use from LibLime. I mention this because there are at least two different versions of Koha that LibLime supports.
I love our ILS, branded [..] , administered by [...] in [...] . The only aspect that needs improvement is the functionality of the the reports for staff.
[...] There are things I miss about Horizon but you can't beat the Koha's price.
Our ILS is open source!
Our school has two physical libraries and an archive. The Koha ILS allows us to have three "locations" that can transfer items and manage hold request between the three locations.
[...] ISD is a poor school district and could not afford anything but open source circ/cat. KOHA has proved to be a good match with our library. User friendly and cataloging is easy to perform. We use LibLime for support after several years of problems with support. They respond in a timely manner and contacting them is easy.
[...] is what we call the Union Catalog that the [...] maintains. There has been a lot of growth over the past 2 years and the number of libraries using [...] has doubled (currently 71 libraries). We expect to add as many as 50 libraries in 2015. PTFS has been fantastic in meeting our day to day needs as well as handling a massive amount of migrations. Open source as a platform is perfect for our consortia because there are all types of libraries represented and we require a dynamic platform that legacy ILS vendors can't provide and are not affordable.
[...]
[...] In our consortium there are stark differences in opinion between the people who use the system every day all day and the consortium managers that have direct contact with Lib-lime. It is hard to find a fan of Lib-lime Koha at the librarian level. Lib-lime Koha is slow, our database implementation extremely inefficient, development is virtually nonexistent, and the patron experience is horrible. I hear complaints every day.
Koha works fine for our small public library. PTFS/Liblime support isn't much better than adequate but again, its fine for our small public library. Although I haven't given any high marks to our vendor or the ILS itself, I in no way see us ever going back to one of the traditional ILS vendors nor do I see us switching to one of the other companies that supports open source.
A few small issues aside, Koha (hosted) works well for a small library. However, one aspect of the ILS that needs improvement is its bare-bones inventory tools.
[...] migrated to Koha in mid-November, so our experience is still fresh, and we are still learning about all the functionality the system. We believe that being part of a consortium with over one million items is a boon to our patrons.
There were two major upgrades to the LibLime Koha software. One made improvements to the acquisitions module. The other made a major overhaul to the financial piece of LibLime Koha. LibLime has also been working on a discovery layer for the academic version of LibLime Koha which we should have access to in 2015. This should provide improved access to digital resources.
We are very happy with Koha and our Vendor. [...] has been very busy this year with Oslo though so we had to develop some patches with other companies for 2014. Hence a slightly lower satisfaction with our vendor - we love having Oslo as a fellow Koha library but is has made it harder for our vendor to allocate the time we would have wanted to our needs.
We create patches for the functionality we are lacking. The thing we are missing is mostly connections to specific Swedish services. Our support vendor is great but have been quite busy with Oslo this year and therefore we are using some additional vendors for development this year. We have no e-resources.
We have yet to organise our e resources - whih are not at present a large part of our collection in any case - hence the neutral response
Fairly happy with supplier although their pricing structure is not very transparent and seems to be one set price despite size of library.
As a [...]implementer of Kuali OLE 1.5, the Library at present relies on the project development team to supply fixes based on problem reports from [...] University (the other first implementer). [...] continues as a development partner for Kuali OLE and will upgrade as new releases of the software become available. Kuali OLE and VuFind use Solr as their search engine; [...] has purchased a Solr support from Lucidworks.
Hard to obtain disinterested advice or skilful evaluative matrices in rural Australia to guide process of new ILS or discovery layer acquisition
Current supplier good but system is 10 years old and out of date.
Library Corporation has embarked on a new way of gathering library customer and patron user information that I believe has improved their products. Customer service has remained high with very good response time and follow up.
TLC is responsive and is constantly in development. They had a mobile app when we wanted one. When we wanted an API for eBooks we got that. As long as they are looking forward and developing we will likely stay with them. Support is very strong. They have even come here when it was warranted at no cost to us.
The Library Corporation is easy to work with for the most part. There are some areas that did not migrate with the upgrade to a web based product that we would like to see integrated.
We're always looking for less expensive options but are afraid of support and technological expertise (or lack of expertise to handle issues). None of us is trained in computer programming or in more than basic computing.
TLC has been very responsive to any requests. They are professional and courteous and take the time to explain any complicated or difficult situations/issues.
Patron catalog VERY visually attractive. Was told by sales rep that the patron catalog would truncate. It doesn't. Reports function not user friendly. Put on your waders. We have the "Hosted" version. So glad! ILL function very poorly designed. Customer service is usually very responsive. TLC needs to have trainers who have worked in libraries, and hopefully have used various ILSs. Mere computer trainers was not adequate.
no comments
We have been frustrated with reports in TLC, they are clunky at best. We also have issues with the lack of ability to use our ILS with a neighboring library (also on same ILS) to share catalog without having to make one library the main library and the other a branch (not politically/financially possible in our area). There are quite a few small things we wish worked better in TLC but functionality is simply not there.
We are very pleased with our ILS vendor; their customer support is first rate. They respond to support requests in a timely manner and are always friendly and professional. The company listens to its customers when developing new features and encourages library to become early adopters in order to test the software before it is put into wide release. We feel as though we are partners, we are listened to, and our opinions matter.
The development of the Discovery Interface is intriguing and would have great promise for a public library of our size. No doubt, there would be a learning curve for the staff and patrons. However, the access potential for our public would be a new level of information that presently does not exist with the technology we have in place.
It seems the simpler the request, the harder it is for TLC to take on and fix or upgrade. Sometimes it comes to a new module fully upgraded to fix a lot of the original module problems which can take several months to be done.
I have just come on board as Library Director and there is no staff support to help with the functionality of the system. Currently we are trying to understand how to operate the circulation portion of the system and that seemed pretty easy, but I am not versed on how to do an inventory and the automated system seems a bit un user friendly. Hopefully I will be able to go for some training with TLC company to fully understand the system. I answered the questions to the best of my ability but understand that we have not had any contact with the company since I am trying to finish the clean up process first and the second phase will be to get the automation system up and running. So very sorry if I did my best with first impression of the user friendliness of the system. I also don't know what is meant by implementing an open source ILS? sorry.
[..]
We are very satisfied with TLC - the product, the company, the support and the people who work there.
We just did and RFP an chose a vendor for the next phase of our ILS. We are also implementing Social Force with this ILS as well as discovery.
We bought out our contract from Sirsi-Dynix to move to The Library Corporation and have been ecstatic with our customer service and our product ever since. The only issues we have had are minor ones and they are addressed within hours of being reported. When TLC holds a national conference for users, I feel like I'm going to a family reunion. Even Annette Murphy, the President/CEO, has been with the company for 40 years!
Very satisfied since migrating to The Library Corporation 1 year ago. Staff and public find it easy to use. Their "hosting services" make upgrades seamless. We are particularly happy with the reports we are now able to generate since now no matter when you run a report you get the same results (that did not always happen with previous ILS).
We've only been using our present system for 14 months or so, so our prior year comparison data should be discounted (I tried to select neutral numbers there so they should interfere minimally with statistical analysis). Number of items in our collection presently refers only to our physical collection, no electronic items.
We are very satisfied with our current provider, Library Solutions and would not consider a change any time soon
The collection number I gave is for books. I have about fifty print journals, but only one currently being delivered. I access electronic journals from our health system's "main" library, the [...], which is located in [...] (about 50 miles from my library). I am a solo hospital librarian, which is why I cannot afford to have a "real" ILS. I tried to get on with the main library but it would have cost me 5,000$ a year or more. For my library to get a different system, which delights and doesn't simply suffice, it must be low cost. Hospital libraries have the least money or opportunities as any I have found (even impoverished school libraries qualify for beaucoup grants!).
[...]
We use a very inexpensive ILS as we are a small library in a rural area in a town that doesn't have a lot of money. For what we pay for, we get enough to really help us. What we want is for our state library to be able to have all libraries in the state migrate to the same platform.
LibraryWorld's serials module doesn't work very well for us (a law library with lots of loose-leafs). Also, it lacks an acquisitions module which we need.
We use LibraryWorld for print books and ebooks. We use SerialsSolutions 360 Core and 360 Link to manage our print journal and ejournal collection. Wanted to clarify that as it means the number of items is books and ebooks only.
For the cost, Library World is very effective for a small library. There are some drawbacks to the system, but the company is very responsive to requests for improvements.
The current system is fair and covers most of our needs, but often won't let us perform the simplest thing. We will migrate in the next year or so and I will investigate open source options then.
The major problem with Library World is the lack of good reporting tools.
I increasingly feel disappointment with the current ILS, especially in growth of usability patrons' web-interface and in old-fashioned customizing method (* Only tool to modify web design is vi (editor) on Solaris, over CUI.)
LibDatabase was developed locally. The ILS products on the market are 1) Prohibitively expensive - costing 5 or more times the Library's annual budget OR 2) Do not appear to guard patrons' privacy. Any ILS that wants photographs of patrons, or associates checkout history with an individual person is suspect, particularly if Partner corporations can access this information.
Some of the questions are irrelevant because we have a system that is locally developed
This product is fine for what it does, but ideally we would like one with more user features. If we change ILS's, it would almost certainly be to join a consortium to get a higher end system. We don't have any particular system in mind.
Cost always dictates our choices since we are a small library system with a limited budget.
We have been a Mandarin M3 customer since 2000. Over the past five years the staffing levels in support have dropped along with their ability to support the M3 product. Most development work has been done on their web-based product which is still far inferior to the M3 client product. We are looking at other ILSs due to inability to deep link to Worldcat, inability to display holdings under z39.50 and ongoing problems with SIP2
For the cost the system is adequate for our needs though Canadian content and links within the database would be beneficial ( links to new additions to display on our web page, set up reading lists linking back to catalogue.
Have spoken with president and vice president of the company. They are very interested in customer suggestions for improvements and are incorporating these in upgrades.
We upgraded from Mandarin M3 to Madarin Oasis which is cloud base and we love it. Great product, Great support.
the number above is physical items; add 170405 ebooks to above if you wanted that
Innovative Interfaces priced us out of their market....too costly to update to continue with their products
Since we access millenium through our consortium, I really can't comment on the customer service provided by innovative interfaces. I hope that the upgrade to Sierra will obviate the need for much of the support from the cooperative library system. There is a lousy discovery product inplace but I believe most of the directors in the consortium want to wait until the new ILS has been up and running for a while before they consider another major change.
We have undergone a dramatic reduction in space and lost the ability to manage and house a print collection save a few titles in a Ready Reference Collection. While we had a separate library system and are an independent library, the print materials and management of these items went to the main library. We are left to wonder what we are doing moving forward. Having a full ILS for an electronic only collection is nuts. This is what is driving us to a new option. It is not dissatisfaction with III. Interesting times indeed - but I suspect others will be here also.
We've had some ups and downs with our ILS vendor this year. Sometimes service has been great - fast response and very helpful. Other times, open calls sit and sit ... and then we have to escalate them. We're just finding that it used to be consistently pretty good - now it's a crap shoot.
While we are impressed with the functionality of III's Sierra, we are unlikely to upgrade to it. We want to put more of our resources into customer services and resources that most directly benefit the user and our current thinking is that both they and we could make do with a less robustly functional ILS system if we can get substantial savings AND a less functional but just as reliable system. Open Source or the OCLC product are both options we are considering; neither seem to have passed the reliability/stability test yet, but we think they will.
We are the lead library in a public library consortium. Some of the directors are unhappy with III's price structure and cost.
I was not here when our ILS system was purchased and installed. Since I have been here we have had good service, upgrades have been performed according to schedule.
VuFind-Plus is a great fit for [...]!
Approximate # of items is physical items; that number does not include electronic resources.
Consortium RFP in process.
We consider that Sierra is not a new ILS but it is a new version of Millennium.
"Number of items in collection" reflects number of item RECORDS in our OPAC
It's not that Millennium is bad, it's more that times have changed. We are a medical library and almost all of our resources are either electronic (or will soon be). We have very little print and even less circulation.
Generally, we are pretty satisfied with the quality of the product, the support and innovative services our vendor offers. We are interested in seeing how newer platforms can better accommodate e-resources. We are, however, concerned about the rising costs, as our budget remains static. As a stand alone library, we worry about being priced out of our current system and having to switch to a product of lesser quality. We don't want to have to choose between the services we offer our patrons and the system we use to support library services.
Currently investigating, but no purchase decision made yet, to use EBSCO's Discovery Service. We remain concerned about the level of customer service delivered by III since it's new ownership.
I think the restructuring of III has made them not as efficient as they had been. I'm hopeful this will eventually work itself out. Re: Discovery layer. We have OCLC and HATE it. When we upgrade we will be getting the discovery layer of whatever system we go with.
It seems that since the sale of Innovative Interfaces from the original owner that service has been lacking and there was no courtship when we indicated we were shopping for a new ILS. III did nothing to keep us (and we've been with the company for 20+ years). It was time for a change and time to go with a company thinking about 21st century libraries.
Innovative is trying to become more open and community centered, but these efforts haven't gotten very far.
I dramatically increased the approximate number of items because this year I included everything we have in the ILS catalog (print, ebook, and streaming media).
Innovative has the best serials and acquisitions modules, which is why we are sticking with them for now. We are currently on Millennium and are not eager to switch to Sierra, which we've been told by other users is basically the same product for much more money (a considerable one time fee). III told us that if we want to stick with Millennium instead of Sierra, they're going to start increasing our costs by 10% a year, which will pretty much ensure that we're going to start shopping around. If some of these other products (Intota/Koha/Kuali) can develop further and become viable alternative, we'll definitely be looking to switch rather than pay III's exorbitant increased costs.
In general, [...] is satisfied with Serials Solutions (ProQuest) as a vendor. We have 360 Core, 360 Counter, 360 Resource Manager, Intota Assessment, 360 Link, 360 MARC Updates. We have had Summon for 4 years now and like it. Our migration toward SerSol/Proquest has been ongoing for at least 6 years. Our very positive experience with all the Serials Solutions products and services, as well as the vendor relations make us want to wait as long as we can to actually see and evaluate full Intota as an "ILS". We don't want to be impatient and jump into many more years of iii, or some other vendor's ILS and then be unhappy if Intota turns out to be something great.
Our library's biggest concern with Innovative is the Millennium pricing model. We frequently learn that problems we have reported to the helpdesk, or new workflows we would like to implement, will require adding a new module to the system. New modules typically cost between $1000 and $4000 upfront and several hundred dollars annually (through maintenance fee increases). We have seen no indication that Innovative will change this model with Sierra. Given our staff reluctance to change workflows, it seems likely we will not migrate to a new ILS until compelled by our systems vendor, and at that time, Sierra will be an attractive option. Our library is doing its best to manage e-resources with homegrown systems. I don't see sufficient staff time savings to justify paying to add ERM functionality to our link resolver/knowledge base product. Next generation ILS products offer potential to manage e-resource workflows in new ways, but I'm not convinced the systems are ready yet.
We are moving to Sierra. Should have gone live the 15th September but there are issues with Sierra that are delaying the process.
We have been maintaining a "watching brief" on the ILS market for the past two years. Our current vendor has introduced their next generation platform, but we're not sufficiently convinced we should just upgrade to it. We're interested in emerging cloud-based services like OCLC's Worldshare, but not convinced they're ready for prime time yet. We are already making extensive use of open source solutions for other major library services, e.g. ERM, and are considering if it is also time to go in that direction for the ILS.
The timetable for the ‘future’ of Innovative Interface's Millennium needs to be made clearer. It seems that Innovative Interfaces Inc., as hard as they are working to migrate libraries currently on Millennium to Sierra, still needs a strategy for keeping up with emerging services for libraries on Millennium such as eBooks. It would be better if Innovative staff could be more engaged with customers and help us provide emerging services using existing Millennium products.
We use Summon for Discovery, but our library frontpage, [...] directs people to QuickSearch our BentoBox Style Search Interface
We are currently investigating migrating to Sierra or WorldShare. Millennium will not be supported in the near future.
Each relationship between Costumer and ILS vendor comes down year per year.
ILS Vendors have to realize that library budgets are shrinking dramatically. They increase their maintenance fees 3 - 5% / year, while our budgets are decreasing by the same amount. It's simply not sustainable in the long run. Our primary reasons for not remaining with III are: Cost of maintenance Lack of support
We are in migration now, but not live from III to OCLC>
Currently both Proquest and III are promoting their services
Not sustainable, average functionality, near non-existent support and too expensive. It is too costly in staff time and money to gain any kind of level of functionality that we require out of Millennium. We are a public library that doesn't have staff resources or a magic money tree to support this system. New features and products are typically a nightmare for staff to implement and fall below expectations. Costly add-on APIs and SIP2 licences only add to annual bills we struggle to afford. Millennium or Sierra isn't a system I'd recommend for any forward thinking library service that aims to be sustainable.
What continues to be a point of concern for our library is the cost of operating our ILS. It is very expensive, and the annual expenses consume much of our precious few budget resources.
Response time for support services for Millennium has declined in recent years, but especially so in the past year.
Our library's collection represents about 3% of the consortium.
Summon is not as good as it was 12 months ago. It performs slowly and doesn't return all items in search results, that we know are there.
We will be upgrading to SIERRA in June 2015.
A second year into using Millennium and we have uncovered a few more idiosyncracies with the system. Even so, we are still happy with the choice of the ILS and don't believe there are alternative systems that are significantly better. Support continues to be the main complaint, despite Innovative's stated efforts to improve in this area. As an example, our system is hosted by Innovative and we have been waiting over three months for an upgrade to the server resources so that we can migrate to Sierra from Millennium. And we have no clear explanation of why it is taking so long or when it will happen. In short, we are satisfied with the product but not so much with the company .
We considered migration to a new ILS, but have decided to defer until Millennium is closer to end of life.
La biblioteca de la [...] va a realizar su migracion al SGB Koha durante el año 2015.
On the whole, we've found the support service from Innovative to be good. However, we've been very disappointed with the performance of their library relations managers initiative. We expected this would bring III closer and more responsive to our other needs outside operational support but this hasn't happened.
Sierra is being implemented i december
The user interface for library workers of this program is now outdated and unresponsive, our library consortium ([...]) should think about upgrading to a current one
I think the number of items in our collection is drastically low. However, no one is here to give me an accurate answer and the number above autopopulated.
Our current vendor scores very high on their customer service. Our current ILS is very stable. However, our vendor's next gen ILS offering is not particularly appealing.
Since Innovative has switched ownership, there have been some issues with support and getting information. The other on-going issue, which was also an issue with the former owners, is that the prices charged for additional products and services is excessive.
For the past five years Innovative has been deaf to our concerns about their mandating RedHat 5 and the many related security vulnerabilities inherent in their required configuration. In 2011 their VP of Technology answered my security related questions with smoke and mirrors BS, and then promised they would support for RedHat 6 by 2012. It still hasn't happened and were nearly in 2015. The recent hacks into their systems (including ours) is the final straw for us, and we are migrating off III as expeditiously as possible.
Having dealt with Millennium for over six years, I think it is one of the most poorly implemented, labyrinthine systems I've ever had to work with. Its documentation is difficult to decipher (at best), and its multi-faceted layers of permissions and options are some of the best examples of software cruft and poor UX in the modern age. I'm not certain anyone else's business models are much better, but I find the whole idea of having to contact Innovative for simple things (like adjusting certain reports) patronizing, and paying for cable company-like bundling repugnant.
Lack of training (including adequate documentation)continues to be a major problem. We are moving away from the Innovative link resolver due to performance issues.
number of items is physical items not e volumes.
III would have been a good product IF our library had the budget to pay for all of the modules. As it is, we have a Cadillac system, but with only the steering wheel, engine and axles. It was a poor choice on the part of the previous library director to purchase this system. That said, III's customer service has always been excellent and the system we do have works well. In the past couple of years, however, it is less likely that I will be able to talk with someone in person at III, and more likely that I'll get put into a queue for someone to get back to me later. This always happens in a timely fashion, however. As for Ex Libris, we purchased this system because the other community college libraries in Washington state are planning to get this vendor. We attended a meeting where librarians from Orbis-Cascade Alliance talked about why they chose Ex Libris instead of continuing with III, and much of what they said made sense. Also, for the same price as we pay for the basic circulation, cataloging, system admin, reports modules in III, we can get something with an acquisitions module, periodicals module, extensive analytics and that will also help us manage our electronic subscriptions. The downside of Ex Libris appears to be their customer support. All support cases must be logged in online - I rarely, if ever, communicate one-to-one with a support technician. I NEVER have spoken to one on the phone, like I commonly do with the technicians at III. Our implementation of Primo was rocky, at best, because they rushed the libraries through the implementation and we never clearly understood the implications of the choices we were being asked to make in the implementation "workbooks." They also switched staff in the middle of the implementation. We have been promised a better experience with the implementation of Alma. We hope this is true.
We are part of a consortium of [...] that share a Millennium system. This is a system hosted by III, and our contract expires in April 2015.
[...] has already signed a contract with SirsiDynix to replace Millennium, but have not yet implemented the system.
The collection size for ALL material types, both hard copy and electronic is 568,181. At present there is heavy weeding of collection that is taking place for the plans to merge the two libraries next Spring.
We are very happy to be leaving III's Millennium for Symphony, for ebook integration in OPAC, & many other reasons.
We are a large Special library currently linked as a branch library to an academic institution. In theory this should have worked very well but in practice we find that we still need to have dependable ICT competency when using a large system such as Innopac. We therefore need to find an alternative and a Cloud service appears very appealing. It is terrifying though to move into this relatively unknown territory.
It is critical to have a system that will cater for all informational and research needs
Awaiting approval to purchase Sierra. Switched from Summon to EDS mainly because price was better.
We are part of a 17-library consortium and we are looking to migrate to a common system in the next year or so.
We have just begun the process of migrating from Millennium to Sierra.
Customer service has definitely deteriorated over the past year. III has implemented a new customer support process which does not work as smoothly as in the past. Also III is intent on acquiring other companies and perhaps that drive to acquire has taken priority over the desire to support customers. We are still on Millennium and have not yet migrated to Sierra--perhaps that is the problem. Just my opinion based on my experience.
We are very concerned about the lack ILS vendors pursuing FedRAMP approval. We may be forced to disregard all ILS features, performance and support issues and chose an ILS based only on FedRAMP or other federal or DOD security policy.
III clearly feels that they have exhausted (and perhaps lost market share of) sales possibilities to their general Northern American academic library market by aggressively expanding into Northern Ireland, India, and the public library market. This has resulted in slow product development and poor support. Sierra, just like their ERM, is simply not ready to go into production yet they aggressively market and bundle it at discount to get users "hooked" into their next subpar offering. I've been using III products since 1992 and I'd if financially feasible and this library had a big enough tech services staff or monographic collection to warrant it I'd migrate as quickly as possible.
There is a government plan to move every public library service in the Republic of Ireland to Innovative's Sierra system next year. We were not consulted on this decision.
250,000 print items and 200,000 subscription ebooks. We can't afford to upgrade to Sierra, but we like III products and support. We keep reading references to "new workflows", but don't yet know what they are - we have been reluctant to get into EDIFACT processing, as we understand that costs more money frmo the vendor. We are very reluctant to spend money on managing resources - we spend money on the resources themselves.
Don't view Sierra as much of a departure from traditional ILS systems.
I left the electronic resources question empty because we don't currently use III's product ERM. We use an in-house created spreadsheet. Have Encore Synergy implemented. Attempted and failed to implement Encore Duet. Now shopping again, considering all major products.
Minisis software is very inclusive so a discovery product is not necessary. This company is accommodating, friendly, helpful, and provides great customer service. They listen to suggestions and explain things well. It is also a Canadian company! Minisis Inc. is a good company to deal with and you actually get a person when you call.
Musac is not providing good stability or functionality for us as a community library. It would be fine for use as a school library only.
The present product is an open source version. Verus Solutions are technical support providers. We work closely for developing various new features and customizing existing features as per our requirements. The techsupport team is very receptive to our suggestions and prompt in implementing them too.
I did not understand what "integrated library system" is. As I read through the questions it got more confusing. That is why I selected "0" -- I could not delete . And another thing is that Deer Lodge Public Library no longer has a web site.
We are not automated at this time, and as of this time there is not indication of changing, but hope in the future they will consider doin so.
We will be introducing the RSA online scanning after the first of the year and are in the process of obtaining a grant.
WE are not ready to become automated
[...]
Not user friendly, Tedious to import MARC records into system, difficult to export marc based records, unable to print spine labels and inside book labels, report formats pose a challenge; moving from screen to screen is slow and sometimes tedious
Vendor has just (October 2014) implemented a union catalog for its congregational library customers. This is a feature requested by these customers and includes only those libraries that specifically requested to be union catalog members. We are very excited by this development, and impressed by OPALS - MediaFlex's willingness to implement this feature for a relatively small customer group.
I don't know what a "discovery interface" is.
OPALS is a wonderful library automation system. The support from Media Flex is unbeatable. The company takes all input from the end users for all updates which enhances their software continuously. Due to their tech support and easy to use software, we have purchased other automation for the library to use.
We are very satisfied with OPALS. Meets our needs and the price is right!
Very inexpensive for capabilities received. Graduated fees make automating feasible for small nonprofits with limited budgets. Flexibility for designing and customizing layout and content of OPAC Home Page is a plus for libraries without access to their own separate website. Keyword searching overcomes many issues created from by bibliographic records transferred from non-MARC databases, as well as records entered by people with limited understanding of standard library cataloging. Excellent customer support & rapid response to questions. Did not answer question above about whether customer support has gotten better or worse in past year. It has been excellent for as long as we've used the system (over 5 years). Most support is provided by email, with screen images often supplied to illustrate the the responses.
Customer service is extraordinary and the company continually upgrades its product in response to customer concerns and ideas. We look forward to greater improvement.
At the moment, we do not subscribe to any electronic resources, therefore I left that answer blank.
OPALs takes a bit of navigating, and is definitely optimized for k-12 school situations, but it does what it is supposed to do, comes with excellent service from bibliofiche, and is low cost.
We love OPALS
I am an enthusiastic OPALS user. Customer service is unsurpassed in any field, much less among library services. It is affordable and features an intuitive user interface. Centralization of library services (to Destiny)has been discussed at the supervisory union level, but I would resist a move on the basis of the advantages of OPALS I have mentioned.
OPALS is an excellent open-source ILS, and the staff is accessible and easy to work with. The online catalog provides lots of neat features for users and staff. I do hope that OPALS expands features for user accounts and provides more customization for libraries in future releases.
OPALS is an excellent company to work with. Their customer support services are the best this library has ever experienced.
My only complaint is that I had the ability to add unlimited items to my bibliographic pathfinders when we first used the OPALS system and a restriction of 50 items was superimposed subsequently. As large, long, projects may use any number of interdisciplinary resources, it is a pain to create multiple pathfinders for a project. Other than this, I am well pleased.
OPALS works well enough. The company is very responsive to suggestions and feedback. They have given us good training and helpful updates. It's just a big system that tries to include the needs of many types of libraries, which can make it cumbersome.
[...]
Very satisfied with the functionality for the price we paid and the relatively inexpensive annual maintenance.
We are just in the process of switching systems so we do not have any information regarding any changes which have taken place in the company/system over the last year. The customer service has been excellent!
We are still in the process of automating and are not up and running yet. The Opals customer service has been very good. I have had two trainings online with a very helpful tecnology person who has walked me through the set up process and helped with trouble shooting. I am very happy with our choice so far.
We already have an open source system, so 2nd to last question is not as applicable
Always outstanding customer service with OPALS/MediaFlex.
I have been working with this vendor since 1998 and they have always been responsive and provide excellent customer support and service. I have recommended this vendor to many other libraries over the years and all the professionals who deal with them are very satisfied.
The system we have is good. It would be better if it allowed more e-mail communication with patrons. Right now we can only do overdue notices, sent to one e-mail address. I'd like to be able to send things to multiple e-mail address and I'd like to send different kinds of notices and reports.
We are a small academic library, so we need something both affordable and standards compliant. OPALS is a very good match for us. It has an e-book feature, but we aren't using it -- I would delete my rating (4) for that question if I could. I rated customer support 5 because it has remained the same.
The biggest plus with this ILS is the level of support, from first responders, to programmers, to the CEO... unmatched by any other software company that I have experience with. The other biggest plus is the functionality of the system itself and the integration between buildings, our Union and Consortium.
Mediaflex has provided excellent service for the OPALS ILS. It is great that they continue to enhance the system and provide regular updates.
The system has worked beautifully for the past 7 years and we rarely need customer support - perhaps once a year. We are a small non-proit with a very specialized French children's collection for internal use only. We suspectl that we are probably exploiting only a very small % of the system's potential and would like to explore how to maximize the software.
We are very pleased with our automation system although, as its services become more complicated and comprehensive, the system glitches are increasing whereby things that worked before aren't working as well now. Hopefully, these will be fixed as time progresses.
Our library archives specialized, printed works. It does not manage digital resources which is why we did not submit a rating for that question.
n/a
Migrated smoothly from our previous system. Follow-up tutorials and service has been timely, professional and courteous. This is our first year. Cannot submit a rating as to whether service has improved at this time.
Great support team; very responsive to requests
Wonderful and quick customer service. Their response to problem resolution is fast, efficient and customer focused. They hold user groups so that they can continue to enhance OPALS and its capabilities.
The developers at OPALS listen carefully to their customers' feedback, frequently adding innovations to meet client needs. Highly recommended.
I have had exceptional service, response, and assistance from Media Flex/OPALS. The catalog works flawlessly for me, and it is simple to add, delete, or modify records. It is an elegant system. Its report functions are well-targeted. Above all, its staff is dedicated to delivering consistently excellent service.
I really like the flexibility of this system and new features that are added from time to time.
Our first year using the system. Service is excellent this year and so cannot compare with previous years. We also do not have electronic resources yet and could enter a rating for that part of the survey.
We have been very satisfied with our overall experience with OPALS. They have been very attentive to our needs. The migration from our old system to OPALS was an easy process, and 99% of the items transferred without the need for any additional input or edits. Customer service is very responsive and the overall cost of switching to a new LMS was very reasonable. I would highly recommend this company and software to other libraries.
We use OPALS for our local catalog as well as our regional union catalog. The [...] holds the records for approximately 167 school libraries in our region.
Not many digital resources im our library collection yet. The system has digital resource management and discovery functions that we plan to use.
OPALS is a very good system, easy to use by both staff and students. The support is amazing--response time is extremely fast for both technical issues or how-to questions. I would recommend OPALS to anyone who is looking for an easy, versatile and affordable ILS.
Very happy with OPALS
The [...] union catalog aggregates the collection of [...] libraries. It serves as a z39.50 accessible cataloging source and is used for collection development. The union catalog does not manage digital resources at this time, although this is planned i 2015.
We are in our sixth year. The system has completely evolved since then and we were not charged more than our annual services fees for all of these changes. Service is outstanding; efficient, competent and courteous.
I have been using Harry Chan's OPALS product for over 10 years. It was one of the first open source library automation solutions to market for a reasonable price and with the firm grounding of having been serving school libraries for decades.
I could not ask to work with a better vendor. Support is quick, reliable, personal and phenomenal! It is wonderful when you are made to feel like the only customer. Support sends screenshots and lengthy explanations whenever needed. I've asked some really ridiculous questions yet I was never made to feel as if these questions were menial or unimportant in any way. This vendor is very open to suggestions from those of us using their product.
Did not submit a rating for e-resource management. Not managing eBooks at this library at this time. When we do, we will use OPALS e-resource management utilities.
We continue to love OPALS !
We appreciate OPALS every day !
the only challenges with the system are that it isn't very user friendly so I sometimes waste time figuring out how to do something that was more obvious in other systems I've used
I am so happy to have discovered OPALS (open source) for our small church library. In addition to having the necessary affordability, it has all the features we need and is incredibly easy to use. OPALS is designed to be used in a school library environment. I wish I had known about it when I was working in a school library.
OPALS is inexpensive and quite good. However, they are slow to provide modules and templates for those libraries that are not school libraries. Their customer care, while friendly, has not been extremely helpful. However, it is a wonderfully easy to use system and mostly very reliable.
No hay una empresa desarrolladora del SIGB, es de investigadores de la [...] (pública) El SIGB OMP se descarga gratuitamente, no hay contrato de por medio. La biblioteca no gestiona recursos electrónicos (revistas on line, bases de datos o similares) La resolución de problemas de soporte los realiza una persona del staff de la biblioteca.
We are using an open source system. I did not know how to answer many of the questions because we are using an open source system. There is no customer support so I put 0, not because it's poor but because there is none.
Our IT department takes care of the maintenance of our OpenBiblio system. They carry a very heavy load and sometimes I feel that our system and it's care are not as important as other demands on their time. With our last system, if we had a problem, we could call and the problem was taken care of on demand. Because our IT department is not familiar with mark records and other "library lingo" and rules, we sometimes go head to head on importance of items. They are great at computers, though and it has served our needs and saved us thousands of dollars over the last 12 years.
[...] is running currently ILS project to start with Mikromarc 3 at 22.12.2014. And that is reason for poorer support from vendor, maybe. Selected Mikromarc via open race and Mikromarc3 has best score. Before race we asked information from vendors also open source but cost were too high comparing to Mikromarc3 or Sierra... Other way open source is one option in future. 1.1.2013 [...] and municipality of [...] united so our collections is bigger than earlier.
Added OverDrive eBook service recently. Software handles e-resources well.
Contacts with Polaris side of Innovative are good. When working through the "Innovative" side, service and response was slow and/or messed up.
Polaris is a good product. I'd like to see our library move to using the ILS as the underlying software with our own custom built interface through Drupal or another open source CMS. Our future as libraries depends on us being able to create seamless experiences for our patrons with the catalog, programs, reviews, digital information and entertainment all blending into one. I don't think any ILS can achieve that and so they need to be flexible enough that libraries can grab the data in them and use as needed.
We have been very satisfied over the years with our selection of Polaris but with its purchase by III we are concerned with the future development of the product. With any takeover the loss of key contacts is devastating. We miss the feeling of family we had with the Polaris staff prior to the buyout and we are worried that the development of the core Polaris product will suffer.
Polaris was acquired by Innovative Interfaces in April. It remains to be seen how this will impact Polaris throughout the organization.
FYI: III acquired Polaris Library Systems in April of 2014. So far it has still been business as usual with the Polaris team serving our needs.
We migrated to Polaris from Symphony recently. As a whole, the migration process was not managed well. The on-site process used for profiling and data mapping forced us to make split second decisions, rather than allowing us study and understand the new schema before rendering our decisions. The data migration itself left us with seemingly endless corrections to make. We are still finding problems with call numbers and other item data scattered in incorrect fields. On the positive side--the Polaris system makes some of the cleanup easier to do. Our bib records were not migrated in the correct format and we were told that we will have to fix that ourselves! Aside from the migration woes, we love Polaris (the software, the company and the people) and look forward to utilizing the many excellent features in the coming years.
We have been very pleased with the Polaris product and its technical support. We hope that Innovative will continue the culture of helpfullness and personal attention that we value from Polaris.
We are upgrading our Polaris system in December. Having had a poor experience with all the Sirsi/Dynix mergers we are waiting cautiously to see how the Innovative purchase will work in the next few years.
All tech issues and applications are handled by [...] . Admin personnel. Policy issues are handled by a Committee of the Whole and sub-committees
We are watching and waiting to see what impact the merger of Polaris with Innovative Interfaces will have on our consortium as a customer.
Our survey responses reflect our experience with Polaris as we continue to deal directly with them and not the company that acquired them. This survey was difficult to fill out because of the recent acquisition of Polaris.
We love the flexibility of Polaris, especially compared to our previous ILS, Dynix. After six years, there are a few minor functionality issues, but the product has truly improved with each release. We look forward to Polaris 5.0 and the Leap client.
Communications are less transparent since the acquisition of Polaris by III. For example, during the October Polaris Users Group, III management was not proactive in announcing that several Polaris staff had been let go the prior day. Customers ultimately gleaned this information from Polaris line staff.
We have been a hosted Polaris customer for one year after migrating from Millennium. We're a mid-sized public library and Polaris is working well for us. I have been very highly impressed with Polaris customer support, where I've gotten quick responses and clear, useful explanations. I like having a dedicated customer support person as opposed to a generic help desk. Their acquisition by III has raised some concerns, but so far, at least, all is well. I hope that III will adopt the positive Polaris traits and not subsume them into the existing III structure.
The Polaris merger with III is a concern for us. We have already received word that the Fusion module, used for electronic resources, is going to be replaced by III's version in the future. Fusion is not very functional and we anticipated improvements that are probably now not going to happen without investing in another product. Even without the merger there seems to be problems internally with product development. Polaris told us we would need the API to integrate OverDrive with Polaris. We purchased the API and then were later told we did not need that, we needed a connector, which was a separate purchase. We purchased that, but hear about so many problems with the integration of OverDrive and Polaris that implementation is on hold. In the meantime, we are being encouraged to buy LEAP, which is barely developed. We don't want to purchase any more half-developed modules.
We are concerned since our ILS vendor, Polaris, was acquired by III. We wonder if the prior good service and understanding of public library issues will continue under Innovative. Nothing to do but wait and see... Our choices of an ILS are now even more limited. In general, ILS vendors don't "get it", that is, the relationship between back end and front end interface and a library's need to deliver to its customers what the customers want. The data is still not open and flexible enough.
We had to request a "clear search" button for our public search interface for Polaris. We may be the only Polaris library that has it. Public Libraries are still concerned about patron privacy in the branch and this seemd like a basic feature. It took at least 3 calls and 3 emails to get the change made - probably over a 3 week period. With Polaris, one help request always leads to a follow up call or email to clarify the issue. We miss the days of the DYNIX call center where our issues were handled on the spot by the next available employee. Polaris wants to tell us how to fix it ourselves, which is fine, but good customer service will fix it for you and tell you how to do it the next time. We are hosted and paid for and clearly requested Administration support. Now we only want to call if we are really, really stuck because it takes longer to get help directly from Polaris. We can usually figure most things out ourselves in a couple of hours of tediously hunting through menus. It might take Polaris a week to address the issue. We need an easy WYSIWYG editing process to experiment with the look of our catalog. It seems more complicated than necessary. IMHO
Overall, we are happy with the Polaris ILS and the support team. As technologies evolve, we hope Innovative Interfaces will keep us on the cutting edge of ILS technology.
Polaris was recently purchased by III -- our systems folks are keeping an open mind, but we are fearful that the level of great service we had with Polaris may diminish. So far, so good, however. Also, while we are sticking with Polaris/III, we are migrating to the LEAP system -- not sure if that should have been noted above.
The jury is still out, but Polaris's strengths (public library focus, excellent customer service) seem at first glance to be trending downward post-III buyout.
The acquisition of Polaris by Innovative Interfaces Inc makes us uneasy. We have already seen that talented Polaris software and support staff have been dismissed. We are very concerned about the customer support that III will provide as well as the cost for annual maintenance. At this time, we will wait and see but have already started to look at other ILS products in case we decide to migrate. The statements that III CEO Kim Masana have not been convincing nor has the departure of Bill Schickling from product development.
It was very disconcerting to have Polaris purchased by III this year. I worry that Polaris' culture of providing a customer focused ILS will disappear into the morass of III's poor customer service and nickle and dimeing libraries to death. So far they (III) talk a good game but I haven't seen any evidence that their culture has changed.
Our system decides most of the decisions that you have asked.... we use the product, but don't make the decisions
We are all waiting to see what happens with Polaris costs now that III is the vendor.
We have always had a great relationship with and great service from Polaris Library Systems. They have recently been purchased by Innovative, so only time will tell if those things will remain the same. We certainly hope that they will.
It is my perception that customer support has gotten worse since Innovative bought Polaris - I am not certain if this is correct. I do know that things take longer (I am waiting for a quote for adding a report and they have let some of the former sales staff from Polaris go - no one at the company knows how long it will take to get a simple sales quote.)
While our customer support continues to be excellent we have been left hanging when it comes to a PCI compliant solution. Communication with sales has been dismal. Their communication with 3rd party vendors seems to have deteriorated. We hope this will get sorted out as the company settles after the merger, but also realize that there will be less resources put into our software platform.
With the purchase of Polaris Library Systems by Innovative Interfaces, Inc., half of the Polaris developers have been laid off and the development has been slowed. I question the commitment of the new vendor to the Polaris ILS and its future.
The Library retained its contract with Polaris, which we had used for one year previously as part of the [...]. When the Library was dropped from that system, the [...] took over funding for the Library, which contracted Library Systems and Services to manage the Library. The transition from branch to independent status went smoothly during the two week changeover, and staff were able to use their prior knowledge of Polaris to make the Library's reformation easier. There are two improvements that could make Polaris more efficient: a bulk processing function without the creation of record sets and a more dynamic search function within the staff interface. A pick and scan function, similar to the one found in Voyager, would make weeding far more efficient. Also, when searching among various databases in Polaris' acquisitions module, an advanced search feature allowing multiple field searches would produce more relevant results and fewer irrelevant ones. Overall, though, the Library is pleased with Polaris' functionality and reliability. We have experienced fewer crashes, and the system seems far more reliable than CARLweb, the Library's previous integrated library system.
We migrated to our present platform as part of a larger Library System (cooperative) which merged 4 separate ILS systems into 1. My perception is that the system serves public libraries reasonably well, and probably schools as well, though I am less certain about this point. Academic libraries are definitely minority members of this consortia (8 out of over [...] members), and so our voice in suggesting improvements in the system is pretty small. That is one reason we decided to pursue a discovery interface, though we have still not gotten our physical holdings into that system yet, so it is not a real alternative to searching our catalog - yet.
Our Consortium[...] recently purchased the Fusion Module of Polaris to digitize and catalog local history images. It is wonderful to search a local history subject and find an image.
The Polaris product is outstanding in customer service and services.
We have not seen major changes to customer service or development since the acquisition by Innovative Interfaces. We hope that these stay high and that the new company will provide additional benefits.
In the last year, Polaris Library Systems was acquired by Innovative. Polaris is an excellent product, we are concerned that we will be lost in a company as large as Innovative (in spite of what we heard at the recent Polaris Users Group conference). While our technical support issues are still being handled by Polaris people, other customer service/financial staff have changed and I am tracking down invoices that we have not yet received. Innovative has yet to earn our trust, but the pool of ILS companies is rapidly dwindling, so making a change is not on our list at this time.
Since the merger with III, I feel the direction of the company has changed. It seems that the concentration is on LEAP, which we cannot afford, and not on the actual Polaris client anymore. This is a disappointment as I have always given Polaris high recommendations. Support staff still remains attentive and hopefully will continue to be so.
We have concerns over the recent acquisition of Polaris Library Systems by Innovative Interfaces. Although we have been assured the Polaris platform will be maintained, we are concerned about future development and the inevitable fusion of the different ILS platforms.
We selected Polaris based on its reputation for customer support and service, as well as their advertised features. We've been disappointed with both. The proposed product included the ability to take credit cards at the circ desk, including PCI-DSS. Polaris has since stopped supporting that functionality to the dismay of many of its customers. There are several other pieces of functionality that did not meet our expectations. We have been trying to work with Polaris on these but the process has been very slow. We have been disappointed in the customer service from Polaris. We attribute that to the buy out by Innovative, which had the opposite reputation for customer service. As a result of the buy out, contacts have changed, many laid off. As management and responsibilities have shifted within the company, we've seen a degradation of internal communication and thus, service. The staff that trained us often did not seem to know the software well. And we've been told things that contradict the documentation. Despite that, our implementation went well and we count it as a success. Inside the product itself, we have noted configuration settings at the admin level that are misleading, sometimes non-functional. Often these appear to be place-holders for future development. We do like being a Microsoft operation and like the database structure for the most part, though transaction logging is a bit unusual.
Polaris was recently bought by III and we still have not information to form an opinion on this new vendor.
Polaris was recently merged with Innovative and we were slightly concerned but we have had to contact customer service since then and had the same amazing support we have always had in the past.
Polaris has been able to handle merging four local library automation consortia to form one very large consortium in [...]. Polaris staff have been able to keep up with the demands generated by the [...] libraries in this growing consortium. They work effectively with the local library automation consortium staff to resolve problems, initiate new processes, and implement new functionality.
The Automation Department of library consortium deals directly with Polaris and determines upgrades, etc, so our direct experience with customer service is minimal.
Polaris would be a more compelling product if more of its add-on features were included in the cost of its base configuration. Add-ons require annual maintenance charges in addition to the initial licensing fee.
We've had Polaris since I was hired. We are a cooperative, so we don't handle any issues locally. We do have the only Polaris self-check in the system. It works pretty well.
Many of these questions can only be answered accurately by the consortium, are at best, a guess but we tried.
Since Innovative bought out POLARIS, I have seen changes in customer support that I am not happy with. I do not like the Innovative culture compared to POLARIS
Concerned over the purchase of Polaris by Innovative Interfaces. Some aspects of customer support have suffered over the last several months.
I've left responses blank because we don't deal with Polaris directly but through our consortium. We are very satisfied with Polaris and particularly with the job our consortium does in making it available and workable for us.
[...] a joint community college/public library.
We just went live in mid November (2014), so we have been on the system for less than a month. Consequently, the ratings are very preliminary. We are sharing our system via a consortium with the [...] (who has been using Polaris for around 10 years).
We have seen a stark decline in services and product support since Innovative purchased Polaris. Many critical developers were pink-slipped or encouraged to leave, fostering large holes in product support and development. The last version 5.0 was put out without extensive SIP testing, resulting in massive numbers of failures - very unlike the typical release that Polaris does. At the May 2014 IUG, although Kim M. reassured Polaris libraries that Polaris would be fully supported, other signs were contradictory. For instance, III was proud to announce that they had in place a migration path from Polaris to III but there was no mention of the reverse. We hesitate to rely that Polaris will be available 5 years from now but budget constraints prohibit us from jumping ship at this point. We would love to be proved wrong. Also, Polaris has decided not to keep up with PCI compliance which, in this day and age, we consider to be a core element of a major ILS. Instead, they have shunted all compliance to 3rd party companies.
We have seen a downturn in customer service response since Polaris has been purchased by iii.
We are in the process of barcoding to become automated. As of 12/2014 our collection is not online.
We recently migrated from III Sierra to Polaris. During after our contract was signed, Polaris was purchased by III. There have been gaps in support due to the restructuring but we are hopeful these will be short-lived. Only time will tell...
Basically, I think the system does what it's suppose to do. Nothing is perfect, but it is for the most part, adequate for our needs.
As of April 1, 2014, Polaris was acquired by another ILS vendor. Future product development and support for the Polaris product is unknown at this time.
Like many other Polaris customers, we are waiting to see how customer service and overall costs will be impacted by their acquisition by Innovative Interfaces. At this point we have not seen much change - but every so often we get hints of perhaps not-so-good things to come.
While product support has remained about the same following Polaris' acquisition, there is real concern about the future direction of the products from the company. While there was initially talk of a new cloud based product within 3 years, that has now been pushed back to 7 years. During that time we're unsure how the Polaris product with continue to be developed.
Polaris has been a stable and reliable ILS, and our experience with it influenced by the limitations of our participation in a consortium. We don't get to interact with the vendor directly and have been specifically prevented from doing so by both our consortium automation staff and the vendor. Holds functionality is underdeveloped and the list of Enhancement requests goes unattended. No one seems to be focusing on developing and providing a system that serves patron interests and needs.
We feel that customer service has gone down over the past few years. We've been through several site managers and I think the company has grown too fast to provide the level of customer service it once did.
Find Polaris outdated Not user friendly
Polaris was recently purchased by III. Unsure of the ongoing support. We are part of a consortium. That does make our communication more difficult.
have had trouble with many different web pages form other Clifton Forge Links have not be able to use all items on web
Polaris Library Systems has recently been acquired by Innovative Interfaces. it is too soon yet to decide if this is a good or bad thing. So far III has not made substantive changes to the company and has retained most of the trusted staff members. I've been through this several times in my library career and I am concerned about how this will play out in the future. With the narrowing of the field, there are not a whole lot of choices out there anymore. I've never thought of the library market as a place for a company to make an enormous profit but the companies buying up ILSs are purely profit driven and that does not bode well for libraries! We shall see.
We recently migrated from CS/TextWorks (with InMagic Genie) to Presto Cloud for DB/TextWorks - the new interface went live in September 2014.[...] All requests for support are managed via the local distributor, who liaises with InMagic USA as necessary to resolve any issues.
Downsizing of the printed library colllections, increase in e-collections and Future fusion with two other institutes next year influence future choice of system. Also, the system has to handle ILL as most of printed journals are now used from the national repository library or from abroad.
À la question suivante: Dans quel(s) domaine(s) votre bibliothèque rencontre-t-elle le plus de problèmes avec ce SIGB et sa maintenance? Il manque l'option [le SIGB lui-même], car c'est de là que viennent les limites... Pour nous. Voilà pourquoi je n'ai pas répondu précédemment...
Price point is always the issue with our organization. I was very interested in the state's [...] venture, but found the annual costs to be way out of range of what we pay. We recently upgraded to the latest version of ResourceMate (we had been running 3.1 and are now running 4.0). We have found the upgrade has handled many of our functionality issues, though we still have a known issue with the product. The customer support and development teams at Jaywill are supposedly working on a fix, but I haven't heard anything from them recently about it. My experience working with them has been very positive, but it seems a little odd that we have this issue with them.
Senayan (SLIMS) has a very active, mainly Indonesian, support community - an essential for an actively developing Open Source ILS. The core developers communicate effectively in English, and are quickly responsive to queries and suggestions. Having been created to meet the needs of libraries in a developing country ( Indonesia ), whose public and school libraries largely follow traditional western library standards, SLIMS is particularly well suited to libraries in developing countries which are making the transition from paper-based systems to a modern computerised ILS based on international library standards. For many such libraries, the "big" OpenSource ILSs , Evergreen and Koha, may represent overkill, and unwarranted expenditure and time in implementation and training. SLIMS also provides migration pathways , both to, and from. SLIMS OPAC and Admin interfaces are readily translated to other languages and scripts, andit already supports several languges, including Thai, Bengali, Arabic, Spanish... We are very pleased with the product.
Esta herramienta ha sido de gran ayuda, ya que nos a facilitado mejor el trabajo de catalogo y a mejorado el servicio
Por la falta de conocimiento en algunos datos de la catalogación ni siquiera se introduce la información del nuevo material que llega y tampoco desde el lugar que compete vienen a hacer mantenimiento y recomendaciones para ver si e lmanejo es correcto por eso hay veces ni se interesa por entrar la información así sea manual y que queden algunos campos vacios, otro detalle cuando llega alguna dotaciçon nunca envían elinventario de forma magnética, siempre se tiene que solicitar al ministerio y se ingresa con un manual que se tiene del programa y a la hora de volver al inicio resulta que la información se duplica, entonces no se quiere ni utilizar, de verdad es complicado y muy engorroso a la hora de utilizarlo para algunos campos, si falta que el maestro esté al lado mirando hacer la práctica, pero ustedes deciden, con todo respeto expreso éstas partes y al menos se espera que refuercen más el manejo de dicho programa, muchas gracias.
This vendor has outsourced some of its customer support overseas. Sometimes it can be difficult to communicate with staff in the overseas support office. We've seen a degradation in customer service at the help desk--slowness to respond to calls, outsourced customer support. When we started with this company 10 years ago we were very satisfied with the help desk staff. It's not just slowness in answering calls or resolving issues, it's that the personal contact is diminished. Long term employees have recently left the company.
The culture of III does seem to be changing under the new venture capital ownership. It may be the issues arising from trying to digest two newly acquired ILS's, but the help desk and product development seem stuck in place since early 2013, while the PR from the company has improved a lot. I think we're all holding our breath, waiting to see what will happen. (Definitely don't want to change ILS without much bigger issues, we probably have the most full featured one available.)
We believe that since III was sold from being a privately owned company to a privately held company (Venture capitalist) there have been a noticeable change in support structure and delivery. III seems to have lost it's 'mojo' as what librarians want and need. There aren't too many librarians who are true analysts at III. The support asks very basic questions as if they've never seen an ILS before. The software (Sierra) is not an improvement over Millennium. We've stepped back in time at least 5 years. It is not an improvement and I'm sorry we bought the product and migrated.
Their customer service and communication has declined significantly. Recently we purchased a product. It is now 5 months later and it is still not working. We have no idea why. We keep asking and we keep being told nothing--they are working on it. This is one of many examples.
costs aspects should be a radio factor button choice. For an ILS vendor III et al this is the time they should be giving/throwing all the ILS products into the SAME ILS pot to make the best ILS with the design to keep current customers for ever. Our ILS is OK but it is expensive. Add the costs of 1 year, 5 years, 10 years.... and why are we all not moving to open source? Of Sierra -it is still just a tan millennium. We hitting 1.5 years w/Sierra; only just now are we getting stablized after many breaks. Beyond the fixes there has been very little NEW change in Sierra since we went.
This year we merged our ILS with those of our sister colleges [...] . We have a longstanding consortial arrangement with them and have developed strong ties between the library staffs. Our new shared Sierra system is hosted at [...] College.
The Sierra system is still in the implementation stage after three months and many of the possible features have not been locally implemented.
Migration to Sierra from Millennium was seamless on the end user side. Training was excellent
When we purchased Sierra in 2012 (were on Millennium), we were told explicitly that the Sierra/OverDrive API (in development) would be available for our WebPAC. No mention made of having to have Encore. I continue to ask when that will be available, is it only Encore and continue to be told it's coming soon for WebPAC. I've been asking almost two years now. Really disappointed/feel cheated. Sometimes it seems like all III cares about is making press announcements and then telling customers that they have to now pay extra for services that should be standard.
We are very satisfied with our current system. We just upgrade to Sierra this past year and had no problems.
Move to Sierra from Millennium has been reasonably smooth. Only a few issues with our RFID 3M products interfacing properly with the Sierra Desktop client. [..] Thanks for your great work, Marshall!
We haven't been happy with Sierra although it has a lot of potential. I hope the company will put the resources into the system so they can make it the system they plan. It has gotten quite a bit better during the past year but still has a long way to go. A good discover system will help improve they system in a big way.
The sale of the company to a larger corporation is being felt in reduced access to dedicated customer service, and reduced responsiveness to customer requests. We have tickets that have been outstanding for years, and have had some closed without notice and without resolution. We have frequent complaints from faculty members frustrated by the lack of availability of robust index searching and index-based displays. The reliance on relevancy ranking as the solely available display for most search results is not appropriate for academic libraries. We are generally very frustrated with the company as a whole currently, but are still hard-pressed to see better, more complete service options on the market.
Company has invoiced us 3 times for an invoice that we already paid for. Doesn't give us much confidence. Support always refer to documentation, but the answer isn't in the documentation, which is horrible. Support only tells us some things after we repeatedly ask them.
We are still running Classic Dynix and are working on implementing Sierra/Encore. We are not yet live on Sierra, and the Discovery product, Encore. We were very satisfied with Dynix, but were instructed by our IT department that we would have to either upgrade or move to another system as the servers on campus were no longer being supported.
System performance has been slow once we began being hosted by the vendor.
[...] uses additional peripheral systems, being: SFX Link resolver from Ex Libris Content Pro content management system from III SAPnet acquisitions support system (South Africa based)
The Sierra product has been riddled with issues - slowness being a huge one. customer service has been pretty non-existent. We formed a new consortium and all of us recently signed with Sirsi-Dynix after also looking at Polaris and Agent Verso. We liked the Polaris product, but didn't go with it because during our evaluation it was purchased by Innovative.
We are not satisfied with Sierra. It has extreme latency issues that are attributed to "high demand" items. While high demand items to cause latency when looking up records, they aren't the only records that experience latency.
Four months with Innovative have been a severe disappointment. The hosting service is slow. A botched database change which wiped out the university Encore catalog for a week. With Decision Center still to be implemented, the basic reports are not adequate. Support that appears to be disorganized. Staff come and go, including the migration manager in mid-migration.
Having dealt with 5 automation vendors in my career, I.I.I. is by far the worst in terms of promising functionality that it knew it didn't possess and steadfastly refuses to add into the software as enhancements. The software is useless for a multi-type cooperative since Sierra assumes 'one big happy collection of materials' that can be used by all.
Dissatisfaction with inflexible discovery system will lead to a migration to open source offering in coming year.
We just went live on October 15 so we are still discovering how it works and what needs we have.
Sierra's "next-generation" claims, in truth, amount to too little real change at too high a price. The web-based interface (the Dashboard) is still vestigial years after launch, and the java-based architecture is less responsive and more resource intensive than Millennium. The only benefits we have actually realized over Millennium are PostGRES database access (which we don't use a lot) and the streamlining of login processes. For this, we lost access to a significant number of tools available from *outside* the client (in a Telnet window) and we lost significant performance speed, particularly in the area of batch processes.
Our choice of ILS is largely dictated by our consortium ([...])'s.
Recent acquisitions of other ILS vendors, and subsequent layoffs of veteran product managers, has me a bit concerned. Otherwise, Innovative's product is still a sound investment.
We would consider an open source ILS and spent considerable time several years ago looking at Evergreen. At the time, Evergreen just didn't have the functionality that a consortium of our size requires
We are stuck using Innovative because we are part of a larger consortium that uses it for collection sharing. So we feel little power to change your ILS despite the poor customer service.
We migrated from III Millennium to III Sierra this year. It was a very smooth migration. The newer software has added functionality in several key areas. We are adding the III Decision Center and the III Materials Booking products this fall, with target dates for use by next spring.
Help desk response has improved in the last 3-4 months. MUCH better.
I was not a party to the investigation into specific vendors.
We were very impressed by the Open Source option (Koha) but the lack of an integrated ERM system swayed our choice. If it had been a truly integrated system, the outcome may have been different.
The current system appears to be one or two generations behind what the future promises. It is extremely costly, and requires between 1.5 and 2 FTE to keep it going.
ProQuest has made many changes in their support site this year. They continue to have one of the best support services we have used. I think overall, the quality of their databases is often underestimated.
Looking ahead we are interested in a system that would enable us to track use of library resources by students and correlate it with student learning outcome data in other systems.
Moving to Sierra was a good transition. The support during our transition was great. Innovative support is still spotty. Sometimes questions get answered right away. Sometimes tickets get ignored for weeks. Bit frustrating.
Over the past year we have experienced two data losses, both due to carelessness and poor communication on the part of the vendor. One of the losses was quite small, but the other was significant and as of yet we have not been able to obtain accurate information about how much data was affected. At this point we have no confidence whatsoever in the integrity of our data. We are pleased with much of the functionality offered by our ILS, but are deeply concerned about the technical support performance of the vendor.
We are very concerned with the change in Innovative Interfaces. They seemed to have lost their focus. Not sure if they have expanded too quickly, taken on too many large customers or acquired too many other companies. Rumors are flying that they are trying to make company look profitable so they can sell it. They have definitely fallen down on customer service. Plus their sales promises do not match up to actuality. Huge disappointment
Collection number includes digital materials.
We are still learning so much about the new system that our impressions of functionality may be a limitation of our knowledge.
While we are not fully satisfied with our ILS, we have not seen any others that give the complete range of services either. Also, our ILS is tied into our consortium in such a way that we can only switch if the whole consortium does. This makes it a difficult move.
Sierra does not live up to its marketing. It does not yet have useful APIs except for the SQL API. It does not have good support for e-books. Its ERM needs improvement, but it seems to be a static product. It does not interface easily with accounting systems.
Migrating from Millennium to Sierra has provided few, if any, benefits, and in many ways has proved problematic.
iii pricing policies are atrocious. The training is not only expensive (there is almost NO free training), but the actual training is hit or miss. (Some trainers are very good and some are not knowledgeable about the system), The system documentation needs to be greatly improved, especially in the areas of system architecture and processes. Support staff isn't always knowledgeable about the product, and it takes too long to get some tickets addressed.
Not actively investigating open source ILS but we are investigating open source discovery such as Blacklight & VuFind. Looking for a way to bring together all information resources of our institution.
[...] is part of the [...] libraries. ILS is provided by the consortium, which recently migrated to Sierra.
III has been wonderful to work with. The product works well with any operating system. We have a mix of Macs and PCs. We use IPADS as well.
The general perception is that III has expanded too far too fast. While there are more people providing customer service, requests for support submitted via the ticketing system often drop through the cracks.
We might consider implementing an open source discovery layer. The list of unresolved known issues at Innovative has grown recently. Both customer service responsiveness and development have lagged, and the company has been hurt by staff defections, at the same time that existing customers are being nickled and dimed on add-on services. We are generally satisfied with Sierra as a replacement for Millennium, but frustrated that Sierra bug fixes and enhancements have stalled. It will be interesting to see if the acquisition of VTLS/Virtua will boost development of the far weaker Sierra OPAC (Webpac Pro), or if this will just be a case of suppressing a superior product from the market.
We are currently committed to using III products through our Consortium. We usually do not deal directly with III, as all support requests go through the Consortium Central Office. We are relatively satisfied with III, but they are slow to make changes that assist consortia. We rarely have any of our product suggestions implemented into their product.
Lack of a functional inventory system and mobile circ module has been very disappointing. Support is hit and miss. Many assumptions are made by the vendor without a realistic understanding about what an ILS should provide for a consortium.
We don't have an ERM, and Primo and SFX don't talk with Sierra. There isn't an ERM product that would be interoperative with the other systems we've chosen. At the moment, Alma is the only library services platform that is developed enough for us to consider. WMS has very elegant theory behind it, but the application isn't quite all there yet. InTota is still vaporware. Innovative Interfaces is calling Sierra a library services platform, but we don't think it is, and we are very tired of paying a la carte for every new product, especially new products that replace existing functionality we already paid for. We are playing wait and see and hoping that one of the new systems will be acceptable to us before our current servers reach end of life.
We are currently a turnkey system and will remain that way as long as possible. We are not comfortable putting our patron information into the cloud and are skeptical of Innovative's recent track record for ISP hosting.
Migration/go live occurring Fall 2014. Almost there, a bit rough in places. Looking forward to the next one in three years.
Innovative drastically over-promised and under-delivered. Tech support is completely unhelpful and communication between vendor and client and between departments at the vendor is abysmal. Our server is hosted by Innovative and we have daily issues with connectivity. Basic functions, such as searching the collection of a single library or preventing inter-library holds on new materials, are either non-existent or so cumbersome to execute they may as well be non-existent. 5 months after migration, our libraries are feeling like we made a big mistake.
Certainly hasn't proven to be the "Cadillac" of ILSs!
Innovative promised to make our consortium's system holds work the same way they did when we were with SirsiDynix, but they don't, and it's caused huge workflow problems and, I believe, a decrease in circulation. We've had horrible response time issues with our remotely-hosted system (hosted at one of Innovative's server farms), bringing our library to a halt multiple times per day/week. We can't scope our local library catalogs properly, which is frustrating and confusing to our patrons (and Innovative wants to charge each library thousands of dollars per year to do something that SirsiDynix could do with no problem, for free). I could go on and on with the complaints. I would not recommend Innovative to any library or consortium.
novative Interface Inc. has been very difficult to work with and the product Sierra and Encore are terrible. The functionality is not great. Everything is an extra cost and many of the services that were offered in the prior ILS that should be a standard in a library catalog are gone such as being able to default all searches to the owning library. The customer service has been horrendous and I would not recommend this vendor to anyone. I would like to add that the consortium that handles our ILS is not as well versed as they should be in dealing with all of the problems. They are quick to tell us that the problem is local and not their problem or Innovative's problem when that is not the case. The past two weeks have been so bad with just connectivity issues that the type of service we are offering our patrons is embarrassing. It is hard to do your job when the product doesn’t work.
I am shocked and frustrated by the quality of service that Innovative has demonstrated. They sold us a product that is inferior to Sirsi Dynix. Our patrons are not happy and complain often. At this time, (October & November 2014) we are finding the response time is quite slow - embarrassingly so. We all wish we had not migrated to iii.
Since the contracts were signed, this company seems to have taken a laissez-faire attitude toward the consortium. It has been a struggle and has worsened in the past few weeks.
I am very disappointed that what we were shown in demos is NOTHING like what we were given. We were promised the moon but they delivered the dust. It seems like they accepted too many new customers without making sure they could handle it all first.
Integrated interfaces sold us a system with promises of many features that we have not seen. We have had serious response time issues that are not in compliance with the contract specifications. The transition was very chaotic as many of the workings of the system were not made known to staff and customer service apparently did not understand how some things work. The Online catalog has been a major disappointment. This was implemented about 5 months ago.
The migration to Sierra was intended to be an improvement in service to the public. It has proved to be nothing but a problem to staff and patrons. Everyone is at their wit's end. Our previous ILS was Sirsi Dynix and we long for the good old days.
We are new customers to III. As a member of a consortium, I would encourage to any consortia who are considering making the switch to III to consider their decision carefully. Some things I like, but I think the system would work best in a multi-branch situation, not a consortium that has different policies etc. Also, system speed (lack thereof) is a major downer.
We went live this May and we have been very disappointed. We have several issues related to our RFP that have not been addressed and have caused a high degree of friction for the members of our consortium. Help desk calls from the consortium to III languish for weeks or months when their own standards call for twoo-day resolution. We are at the end of three weeks of ongoing, scattered slowdowns that have brought many consortium members' transactions to a halt--serious responses from III only began in the past week. As our consortium chief executive said, "Issues are responded to with platitudes or referrals to higher-ups who never respond." As a member of the RFP task force which recommended this ILS, I feel embarrassed that our hard work and due diligence came to nothing and that we were lied to.
We have spent most of the year on SirsiDynix's Horizon and just recently finished migrating to III's Sierra product.
III makes a big deal about how "open" their system is touting a PostgreSQL database but Horizon is leagues better in that regard than Sierra. Sierra only officially provides read-only access to specially created views. There is not even read-only access to the base tables. It's unclear at this time how complete the coverage of the views are but it certainly is less access than Horizon provides. There are also apparently various other smaller MySQL databases that some components use. We don't have access to those at all. The database structure does not always conform to what I would expect from a relational database. I'm hoping this is a hold-over from Millennium and will gradually be rectified as updates are released. I feel that some of the major flaws are probably there to provide a better upgrade path for Millennium libraries to Sierra but it cripples those of us who came from a real relational database structure. III's migration process seems drawn out. I did not go through our Dynix to Horizon migration but my understanding is that, aside from extensive prep work, it was done in a couple of days. III's process is a phased migration. First you migrate cataloging (which takes 1-2 weeks), then acquisitions (and possibly serials), then you wait a couple of weeks, migrate patron records, then another week or so and migrate circ/blocks/fines/messages. This requires weird work-arounds to keep all services up for patrons. That being said, I was very happy with our data profiler who did an excellent job and was very responsive to changes we requested.
While most of our implementation team was fairly responsive, our Encore team was terrible. Simple issues took 4-6 weeks to address. Spell check was inoperable for 2 weeks due to an index that apparently needed to be restarted (which of course we didn't have access to). I've never had this much trouble communicating with other tech people before. Our trainers were pretty good and very willing to work with us. I felt III should have done a better job of separating out "settings" from "training" but in the end it mostly worked out. Go-live went relatively well. Most issues were fairly minor. However, we do have one system that is non-functional and support doesn't seem in a hurry to fix it. Unfortunately, this is a very publicly obvious system and we're scrambling to put work-arounds in place. Everyone I've talked to that used Talking Tech's automated phone system agrees that III's Teleforms system is awful. It's buggy and runs on a consumer grade OS as an application rather than a service. Hopefully they can get it replaced with a different system/vendor soon. III has a one right way of doing things and seems to have trouble thinking outside their proprietary box. Given we also have definite ideas about the right way to do things, this has provided some interesting discussions. All that being said, there are some definite pluses to the product over Horizon. The copy/paste abilities are amazing. Sounds small but saves a significant amount of time as does the ability to reorder the columns. Create lists/Global Update is very powerful. Much, much more powerful than the non-SQL tools Horizon provided. Given they are so powerful, there's also a large opportunity for mistakes to be made. The One-click checkout of Overdrive materials from Encore is fantastic. We're also pleased so far with the relevancy rankings. We had some long discussions with III to get the filters working the way we wanted but now we're quite happy with them. One filter I would like, which is currently not available, is the ability to limit to "on order" items. Also, we hope that III will continue to migrate functionality from their classic catalog to Encore. Specifically, we'd like the ability for patrons to setup preferred searches in Encore as we don't give them direct access to the classic catalog. Encore's base customization is pretty limited but with the newest version the custom header provides the option to use jquery and change a lot more of the look. Probably, though in hindsight I would have advocated for a tighter contract with more details regarding appropriate response time from support as well as complete access to all systems. We're still at the beginning of our relationship with III. I expect with more time we will learn how to work together better and will learn the best way to exploit the system to its full potential.TELEFORM:
CORPORATE CULTURE:
THE GOOD:
ENCORE:
WOULD WE DO IT AGAIN?
We recently joined [...] consortium and moved from Millenium to Sierra. Innovative made many promises in our contract, most related to the functionality of Encore to meet our needs. They have not lived up to their promises making lots of Library Directors very, very unhappy.
The Sierra ILS has provided major improvements in functionality for our library over the previous ILS. We are on the whole very happy with the current system. The only exception is in the area of acquisitions, which could use improvement.
We are hosted and have had a fair amount of trouble with it. We just went through a 2 week period where we experienced downtime or very noticeable downtime. Less than a year ago we needed to reconfigure our system and have downtime because the hosted site was relocated. Overall I do think the support has gotten much more responsive since we went to Sierra and infinitely better than what we had on Sirsi Symphony. Overall, I feel confident in the future of III as they continue the transition away from Jerry Kline. Many more support staff have been hired and projects are being more professionally with best practices.
Innovative is going through so many corporate changes that there has definitely been a loss of institutional memory and support staff who are familiar with old and complex systems such as ours. Several important modules have seen product manager changes in the last year - some more than once, This is worrisome. On the other hand, the support desk is definitely striving for faster turnaround and, with a new support desks in Europe, we can often get a faster response to our queries.
Sierra is a very nice and powerful ILS, but development of the product and promised enhanced features are very far behind schedule. Since Innovative sold out to venture capitalists, support has gotten increasingly worse. Hard to justify the high cost of staying with Innovative; we will most likely be moving to another ILS this year.
Their tech support had diminished over the past year. We have an open ticket for a product installation and it has been difficult at best to reach a resolution. When they find one, the resolution breaks a different part of the system. Once the call was escalated, we have been receiving more updates on what is happening, though no in depth details.
When we implemented Sierra, we were told that it would have all the functionality of Millennium. As to date, it still does not have all the functionality.
Our system is a shared catalog with twenty or so other colleges in [...]. Anything we do would be done in conjunction with the people who manage the system for us. Working within the consortia keeps our costs and our staff time to a minimum which is why we stay in the group.
It is very clunky to load and maintain subscription products within the ILS (e.g. ebook packages). Also, I feel interface upgrades, such as Encore for Sierra/Millenium, ought to be provided free of charge rather than paying for the upgrade. I feel that we are paying quite a lot yet the catalog interface is very dated and we cannot even get faceted browsing without upgrading/paying for Encore.
Our library consortium purchases our ILS system, so if we move to a new ILS, it will be done on the consortium level. While Sierra does a lot of things well, there are things that could be improved when it comes to Encore and patron access to our collections. If Encore would implement more "Bibliocommons" type functionality, we would be very pleased.
Customer support and documentation poor.
Our Sierra implementation was very onerous and problem-ridden.
We like Innovative not happy with Sierra--functionality not as good as their Millennium product.
We implemented the III Sierra system in order to join the [...] consortium. If we were ever to leave [...] I would be looking at open source systems for our small library collection.
We launched the new stand alone system in May 2014 and we had some issues with the original installation which has since been rectified.
Innovative does seem to have a great vision for their product, but it's hard to get excited about the vision of a product when you can't even reliably launch the client, and the help desk lets your ticket stagnate for months. We are extraordinarily disappointed with Sierra, and have had one of the worst customer support experiences imaginable with them. Our decision to migrate to Sierra has been devastating for our system. Right now we just want an ILS that works, forget about all the
We really don't have any contact with customer support at our library level - it is all done through [...] Service.
Sierra is largely a good product; however iii's needs to rethink some of the business logic that they moved from the flat file systems to relational databases. I loath to see the acquisition of more ILS vendors by equity investment groups. They care only about recurring revenue, and development is too low a priority. Subsequently, patrons have less reason to come to the library for content. Patrons' interests will continue to shift to relatively inexpensive, fee-based products for the convenience they offer. Equity investment in library products is bad news.
Sierra has been in place in this library since early June 2014.
We may implement WorldCat Discovery to improve discovery for our licensed electronic content (right now only JSTOR and AHL on EBSCO). The in house discovery platform is for our museum collections and locally digitized resources. A subset of our institution's holdings (with just a few resources from our library) were contributed to DPLA in October 2014.
Sierra was installed in this library since early June 2014.
Innovative's customer support seems to be more responsive. Its worldwide organization adds to some follow up challenges. Calls are best opened via email and followed up by phone. Tech support staff seem to be working under a more aggressive company expectation to resolve issues quickly. Sierra's standard reporting features are inherited from Millennium and have not been updated. Rather, an additional cost reporting product has been developed. We stopped using the ILL and Reserves modules years ago and are currently considering replacing WAM with EZproxy. WorldCat Local tech support has been less than acceptable due to apparent new staff, inadequate communication internally, long times to resolve critical problems. This is a large part of our motivation to move to Summon for our discovery tool.
We were investigating open source but decided to continue with Innovative.
The discovery layer Encore Duet (III and EDS from Ebsco) is not as good as it could be. EDS on its own may be more satisfactory, Library is part of consortium and so we compromise! The look and feel of the discovery layer Encore Duet is out of date. Still many problems integrating electronic resources into the III Sierra. This is the reason for the Encore Duet discovery interface, as most of the electronic resources knowledge base resides in the Ebsco Linksource/AtoZ List and not in III Sierra. Implementation of the interface was time-consuming and difficult. Ebsco provided a dedicated person to help set up the EDS portion of Encore Duet for each library in the [..] consortium. On the other hand working with the III Encore production manager was much more hit and miss, plus they had a change of manager during the process. Although the EDS was much more customizable for each library, the Encore side was customized by consortium-wide decisions and also with the Encore production cycle (6 months I think). A very unsatisfactory hybrid solution -- not recommended by me.
We are very happy with our system.
We pretty much run everything having to do with the ILS through the consortium, [...] , so they'd be better at answering how satisfying the ILS customer service and support is.
Please note that we have contracted for a hosted Sierra solution but we have not implemented Sierra at our library. This is due to firewall issues raised by our IT Security Dept. They will not open the necessary ports to connect to our hosted Sierra server. We do not have the resources to host the server in-house and we cannot proceed with opening firewall ports. The next system we purchase will need to use an HTML thin client
[...]
On the question about whether we would consider working with the same vendor in the future, this was more difficult to answer on the scale. We've had a lot of issues with promises made by Innovative about Sierra, which were not upheld. Innovative also has some troublesome ideas about costs for innovation (charging for APIs for instance) and their pricing structures are problematic. Plus we're in discussions for a consortial system, so we hope to make choices based on what the consortia decides.
Since the change over to venture capital cpmpany's, III has bceome very unstable. A lot of experienced staff have left the company. It put a lot of toll specially to the Middle East customers. On top of that III is working with a local distributor who is also selling SirsiDynix product. We are resisting to work with the local distributor as they are not good at all. Since the purchase of VTLS and Polaris, we can see the delay in development work in Sierra and Encore. The same scenario I have see with SirsiDynix years ago when they been through the same situation.
Satisfaction with the ILS has been dented by the number of new bugs introduced by Sierra bug-fix updates. The focus on bug fixes has made development of Sierra much slower than Innovative led us to believe it would be (not that we suspect they were lying to us - they wouldn't have expected so many bugs themselves). Customer service overall has been improved by the introduction of Library Relations Managers - ours has been very effective.
This is a new implementation of the Sierra system (migrating from Berytos). Migration complete: September 2014.
Sierra took two years to deliver the product. At a sales meeting 2 years ago, the salespeople could not get the demo to work. I am disappointed that the same system that allows for Hold and Inter-library loans cannot track the data. In any other business field, Sierra would not be in business.
Choice of ILS is dependent on the consortium to which the library belongs. There have been discussions about a future ILS migration. Any movement in that direction is many years down the road.
III has truly terrible customer service and a programming model that went out of fashion in the late 1970s. The way they close access to our own data is frustrating to the point of enraging. It's too bad they bought Polaris - a company with a reputation for good customer service.
Too many issues in Software Engineering that don't get resolved in a timely fashion Inability to access closed tickets Several instances of system upgrades without notification to consortium staff Inability to perform secondary system refresh on our training server when previously, we could Current ticket system is awkward - needs a subject line, for example The changes in the structure of management in the last 18 months have been positive Beginning of implementation of APIs is a good thing Good communication with our LRM and sales person New releases are stable and have kept the system moving forward
Would like to see improvement of customer services, and clear development goal and product delivery for the next few years.
The customer service and software quality at III has really gone downhill. The company has lost or let go of many of their most experienced staff. Every Sierra patch or update within the last year has caused issues with critical functions in the software. It's painfully obvious that they are having a lot of internal issues as they try to absorb Polaris and VTLS and make investors happy. Overall the software gets the job done, but our confidence in the company and the reliability of software updates and support has never been lower.
Maybe I'm being picky not giving 9s. III has been good about opening up Sierra with APIs that permit, or will permit, much better integration and performance with our VuFind-based discovery layer. We're satisfied with the ILS on the staff side, although we think some things are just inexplicably clunky; the Java clients are way too vulnerable to fluctuations in Internet service.
Sierra does not seem to live up to the advertised idea that it would be a great improvement over Millennium. It seems that Innovative's choice to stay with an unstable JAVA platform is causing Sierra to suffer from many of the same behaviors that Millennium always did. Updates seldom come without new bugs these days.
Slow or no response to email questions. Expensive maintenance contract.
The amount of staff turnover at Innovative since it was bought by its current owners concerns us, as does the company's (related?) inability to deliver on developing functionality it has promised.
Although we are generally satisfied with Innovative and its products, we are on a separate system from our main library, and there has been considerable pressure on campus for us to migrate to the main library's system, so we are moving in that direction. If/when they decide to migrate or upgrade, we will be part of that decision.
We had some hopes that things were turning for the better for a brief period at Innovative, but since they have acquired Polaris and VTLS, customer service, enhancements, and product improvements haven't been better. The staff with whom we cultivated good working relationships with are now gone. Development for most products seem to be behind the times. They have swallowed most of the rest of the industry, so there's no other vendor to really turn to unless we pour our own resources into open source. They have a capacity problem and growing pains that have been going on for several years now and it needs to be remedied asap. But I guess it doesn't matter too much since they're the biggest fish in the ILS industry right now.
We are members of the Marmot consortium, based in [...] and we are quite pleased with their service & expertise.
Innovative's customer support has been negatively affected by the company's recent changes. They seem to be having a very hard time turning things around.
EBSCO Discovery has changed over the last two years- not for the better. We have brought our issues to our representative at EBSCO but nothing has changed. He is very concerned but I doubt if the final decision is in his hands. The subject headings they provide are very strange and have nothing to do with what is being searched. They won't incorporate ProQuest, etc. Basically, it's like federated searching. We just had a meeting with Summons and we are really impressed. Hope we sign up with them. Innovative has proved to be a big disappointment. Forget their "Duet" product- the worst. Encore is just so so. We have 5 yr. contract with them. Although our systems librarian very much likes their modules and their ability to be manipulated to create lists, things like that. He really like that. Don't mean to go on- our EBSCO contract will be up in June. Their rep. is meeting with us next week.
functionality - expensive for extras, some things doesn't work without a lot of staff time, authorities are not very intuitive managing electronic - cumbersome, public facing side is not intuitive satisfaction with iii - work on openness and forward thinking customer support - very friendly and knowledgeable, willing to help in any way
During that last year Innovative Interfaces has undergone major change with the acquisition of Polaris and VTLS. Also there has been great emphasis on expanding to new markets. Unfortunately, less emphasis has been placed on serving existing customers needs.
My library launched Summon Beta service on Nov. 2014. Our library is the first library in Korea which decide to do Summon API, too. But it wasn't that easy and still we have problem that Summon's indexing time is very limited. Summon's indexing time is only twice a week but our ILS system's indexing time is everyday. This will cause a problem when users tried to find new books via Summon.
Slow implemention of new services. Main emphasis is on public libraries concerns
Overall we're very happy with Spydus software however the training in their product is not very comprehensive therefore, leaving us to a lot of guess work which is disappointing.
We will be going out to an open tender very soon, so will consider any Library Services Platform including combinations of products e.g. Koha with Blacklight. Version of Spydus in use is several version behind their current version, about which we have good things, so rating is not a reflection on their current product version.
Spydus is a pretty good system. Easy to use and there are many parameters that can be set to customise it to our needs.
Managed Services system works well and we are pleased with version 9 of Spydus, especially the improvements made to the OPAC.
Support costs are fair, the software is easily customized (no overlay needed), the company enables access to underlying data to create your own reports, the company makes a test site freely available, and we enjoy hosting the product on our own servers. The software works will with campus student and employee portals for easy click-through/proxy access for remote access to library services and products. Currently assessing incorporation of LibraryThing For Libraries into it.
Spydus installed in April so no response on whether levels of customer service have changed year on year
The cataloguing module could be greratly improved. The system does not allow you to toggle between the enquiry screen and cataloguing editing, forcing you to close down the enquiry screen before you can edit catalogue records. Also, you cannot edit a batch of holdings records.
new research and development in last couple of years has imbued the LMS with a renewed vitality and pushed it forward as a leading LMS internationally, very exciting to be a part of this new regime.
User friendly and reliable LMS, could do with better intergration with eResources.
New modules (enhancements) are being developed but they are not incorporated into regular upgrade of general system - required to pay extra.http://librarytechnology.org/images/nextbutton.png Different categories of customers compete for their needs to be addressed
Having worked in this and other libraries using Spydus for many years, I would have to say that the quality of their training has declined. As in it isn't as comprehensive as it used to be.
My main disappointment is with the release of new products and product updates. Often the product has not been tested properly at the vendor end resulting in an increased workload to 'fix' what was not previously broken at the library end. A recent experience of a client update resulted in lost charges not being removed when patrons returned items. The other disappointment is with mobile apps. Products are released before thorough testing and 'how to' info being available.
Civica are responsive to their customers; user based enhancement forum feeds into the development cycle of the product; good integration of ebooks/magazines into OPAC
I have worked with both Sirsi Dynix and now Civica and I feel this product is leaps and bounds ahead!
My impression is that the company is under resourced so development work and fixes take too long. They have won a lot of new customers and this has sapped their resources. New releases often come out with bugs. However in terms of functionality I still think Spydus offers us more then other systems.
We recently went to tender and found Civica's Spydus the best value product to address our requirements. Strong customer base in Australia (where we are) is a boon.
Our considerations for new LMS: integration of Museum & Gallery collections with library ability to integrate both library and museum classification standards discovery layer that searches, physical, internal and external digital resources standards based DAM better administration and presentation of digital collections library website + ability to create other branded websites for partnership projects faster query response times (than our current system) Google like search facilities (more user centric design) Outsourced infrastructure hosting and maintenance Outsourced system librarian maintenance While Civica Spydus are developing services that are in line with our strategy. Support is still somewhat disappointing. Dealing with via email back and forth to clarify issues before even the problem begins to be resolved is cumbersome, frustrating and ineffective. It often leads to abandonment of support cases.
Spydus has built in discovery layer and additional modules for Event Management, Electronic signage, self-issue, and a Business Intelligence Solution most without extra cost which means that as a smaller library we are able to have access to advanced functionality options.
I don't want to imply that I am just haphazardly giving Surpass nines. I truly love this group and the customer service has been outstanding. I recommend them to anyone I know looking for an ILS, who has a smaller collection.
Overall we are quite pleased with our ILS. Naturally, it does not do everything but, it is designed to provide a significant amount of customisation that is seldom available in other ILS. it is likely that a more knowledgeable systems Librarian (than me :-) and an IT shop with more time, that we could do wonders. The most useful thing for us right now would be a faster network which simply shows up our ILS in a bad light but, has nothing to do with the ILS itself.
Strengths. Quite flexible system allowing much customisation. Including trouble shooting. Weakness. Documentation is lacking behind their products
Symphony is a reliable, strong, very good product. Enterprise is not. The relevancy searching is horrible. There are other very good features but the core searching is poor. They are working on it but it is very poor indeed. One word titles, with subfields are impossible to find. Publication dates should be a part of relevancy. The staff is doing their best to improve it but they seem to be missing what libraries' patrons want in a search. So, this was difficult to fill out this year. Overall I'd give enterprise an 8 or 9 and I'd give Enterprise a 2 in searching and an 8 in special features. I hope that helps.
SirsiDynix Symphony needs a new public interface/OPAC. Without having to buy a new product.
We are generally happy with the direction that Sirsidynix is taking with BlueCloud, however the aging symphony (formerly Unicorn) legacy backend is an ongoing pain point. That said, I don't think that any of the major players, which I guess means evergreen and the Innovative - Sierra and Polaris platforms, are significantly better.
SirsiDynix Symphony is a good, robust LMS but Sirsi have been slow to provide developments in Electronic Resources Management for the system.
We are migrating to Evergreen in March 2015 via the [...] . Equinox will provide hosting, training, and support.
The rollout of Enterprise has been a disaster from which we may have a very difficult recovery. That recovery may involve moving away from SirsiDynix.
As part of [...] , this will be a consortium decision. Please note customer satisfaction marks are for Sirsi and not the local TLN staff. We receive excellent customer service from our cooperative.
We have noticed a significant improvement in customer support but becoming more concerned about testing, release and implementation of new products associated with the "BLUEcloud" suite.
We upgraded our service tier to "Platinum" and migrated the database from ISAM to SQL. A year ago we launched eRC. We have invested time and effort in almost everything SirsiDynix has to offer.
SirsiDynix has gotten too expensive. Blue Cloud is coming out too slowly.
Symphony is a perfectly fine print management system. The majority of our budget goes to e-resources. There's a disconnect between what we need from an ILS, and what's being provided.
SirsiDynix has an unfortunate habit of releasing products to market before they have been thoroughly tested for errors and compatibility issues. This has been happening for several years and there are now a number of problems with its electronic resource connector tools. They have billed customers to correct bugs in their own Symphony software. When questions are asked of the vendor related to compatibility, functionality, adherence to privacy legislation, etc, often vague or inaccurate responses are provided. We would prefer to deal with a company that is honest about its products and pricing, even if there are shortcomings.
We are particularly interested in vendors who incorporate discovery as part of ILS and vendors who are looking at different pricing models for purchase and maintenance.
[...]
This ILS vendor was badly hurt by profit-squeezing tactics by its owners from about 2005 to 2011. Their performance the past couple of years has been much improved, but they have lost ground and market share, making us wonder if we will be forced to change at some point.
I would say that Symphony is an average ILS, but the reporting tool is not sufficient.
Nothing to comment on. Very satisfied with our current system.
Sirsi Dynix works well and is provided at a cheaper consortium price to public and school community libraries in South Australia. Spydus Civica was a better product but did cost more as we were in a small network.
Being part of a Consortia tends to limit independent decision making. For example if there is a stong enough push by a group of libraries to change protocols, all other libraries within the consortia are expected to follow suit despite not agreeing to the initial request.
Support is very good, SirsiDynix is very progressive in utilizing the system for more than just a catalogue and moving to the cloud to eliminate local issues.
The reports module on Sirsi/Dynix Symphony is very unreliable.
I am of the opinion that now is the time to explore ILS open source.
We are generally happy with the vendor but are pushing some of the boundaries of functionality - e.g automatic renewal function being purchased as custom work.
Generally happy with Symphony except for antiquated reporting functionality & output. We don't use Symphony to manage electronic resources.
Development of the eRC should not be only focusing on public libraries but other types of libraries too such as government and other specialized libraries. ERMS should have a more extensive kbase offering a lot more from pure science, social sciences, law content, in the formats of ebooks and ejournals. Knowlegbase or vendor partnership seems to be focusing on public libraries right now. Therefore the offering of eRC to our clients as it stands is not so relevant for them.
Where SIRSI excels in its new BLUEcloud Suite, its telephone system (SVA) for phone account interaction and for autodialing patrons with holds requests dismal. Attention needs to be given to this system. I am seeing software and service improvements from SIRSI at rates far greater than past years. They have a good vision in place to remain viable in the ILS industry for the long haul.
Trying buy and upgrade as we can afford it
Magale Library has only had our new ILS one full year and we LOVE it. The consortium cloud association is absolutely GREAT!
We are in the midst of transitioning to Alma/Primo. GoLive is scheduled for early January.
We are about to study the possibility to go for an open source ILS, for this we are preparing for a research and experiment project (for~ 3 years validity) in order to make a clear scientific decision
Support are exemplary. I really cannot fault them. Library Relations manager is excellent and it's great to have a monthly catch up with the company, product development etc. They involve their customers in the product development cycle - I am on the Strategic Partnership Program for several developments I want to influence. They may be slow catching up with the other vendors' offerings but I trust that what they are developing will actually work for us because we are helping design it.
We are part of the[...] so we don't usually deal directly with the vendor so some of these questions don't apply to us. Thanks Marshall!
SirsiDynix is not particularly responsive to product development or enhancement in the APAC market - is very focused on its North American market.
Our ILS is managed by a state wide consortium. All 23 counties participate, with some additional school libraries, community colleges etc. We do not have the ability to chose or implement our own ILS.
Il est très difficile de trouver un SIGB gérant bien les notices d'autorité et un OPAC exploitant bien les renvois dans ces notices d'autorité. Difficile également de trouver SIGB intégrant un outil complet de gestion des ressources électroniques ("Electronic Resource Manager" ERM) en particulier pour la gestion des contrats, des conditions d'accès, etc.
We will be looking at implementing SiriDynix BLUEcloud Marketplace as our discovery interface in the future.
We need to stabilize expenses over time (a not-for-profit company is desirable); to reduce the amount of specialized in-house knowledge needed for the ILS and Discovery (OSs and multiple platforms); to license a product that is being actively and vigorously developed to incorporate new standards (expenses of modernizing legacy products is a big stumbling block); and last but not least, to provide our users a seamless and integrated user experience with all aspects of library holdings, whether books, ebooks, articles, ILL, media, or whatever. We could buy at great expense all that SirsiDynix offers, and still still be waiting for them to deliver on promises of functionalities that WMS already delivers or will deliver in the near future.
The company, it's support staff and the ILS product are too rigid. I think the company is too busy coming up with "extras" and they have lost sight of their main product, doing only a mediocre job at keeping it updated and relevant.
Vendor support from ILS product is going the same way as all vendor support seemingly as gone in the recent years, way down. Sales staff continue to make promises that the product cannot yet deliver and very little care is taken in any transaction. We feel our ILS vendor takes a great amount of money for support but hardly wants to know what we need and expect.
SirsiDynix has been slow to migrate functionality into Enterprise, their OPAC discovery layer. Many features expected as standard, like the ability to place ILL and purchase requests, have not yet been included. Other areas have been gradually improving.
Regarding company satisfaction, keeping annual maintenance increases at a minimum would be appreciated due to budget restrictions.
We are very encouraged by the development of SirsiDynix's BLUEcloud products. We believe that this is the direction that they should be going and we are seeing continued progress in this area. We are excited about the products already under development or on the roadmap. We especially appreciate being involved through its SPP (Strategic Partner Program) Being able to give our input as to what we want in a system is a fantastic opportunity.
As we are severely understaffed, we aren't really able to consider a change.
We have found that SirsiDynix has become more responsive to its customer base in the last couple years. They have made a concerted effort to involve customers and gather input early in the development cycle to shape new products, new modules, based on customer needs. Instead of "here's our finished new product, what do you think?", the new model is "here's the direction we're heading, here are some wireframes of what we're thinking it will look like, what do you think?"
[...]
thank you
As with many ILS vendors, it seems like product release dates are set by the marketing department and not the developers. The latest 'update' to their Enterprise discovery layer has provten to be particularly buggy.latest 'update' to their Enterprise discovery layer has provten to be particularly buggy.
Primary difficulty with ILS is minimal implementation of available functionality by library system. i.e. ILS could provide functionality needed by library system. Library system simply has not implemented needed functionality from ILS. It is causing a review of available systems -- possible migration.
On the topic of the discovery layer, within our libraries, not all, but several branches have severe Internet bandwidth constraints. Even after adjusting router prioritization in favor of the Enterprise Discovery layer, it is an extremely slow search and retrieval experience within those branches. For this reason, the full deployment of the discovery layer awaits significant bandwidth upgrades. As such, the discovery layer is not high profile and we are calling it Beta. SirsiDynix eRC for presenting econtent (from OverDrive and others) into Enterprise has been fraught with slowdowns also. We have not inserted our eRC into the currently launched Beta profile. While this should not reflect negatively on the vendor, it does bring to light the difficulties and limitations in bringing up network-intensive products with limited network resources. We do fault the vendor for not presenting system requirements for network connectivity for our Enterprise set-up. This experience, combined with our observation of slowdowns and unavailability with BlueCloud Admin (used to administer eRC (eResource Central) has us wondering about the wisdom of embracing the SD BLUEcloud suite.
In mid 2013 we joined a newly-created cloud-based consortium that was planned to cover a number of libraries in our TAFE sector. In the event, we were tacked on to an existing cloud instance of Symphony belonging to a much smaller institution than us. We have had nothing but trouble since then. Basically SirsiDynix did not understand that we wanted our LMS to appear to all our clients and staff as quite independent of the other TAFE institution. Attempts to make our system function as well as it used to have only had limited success. I think that Symphony is not well suited to a consortium of the type that we wanted.
Sirsi has great support. Sirsi's costs are high, but the support is great. As a large library with a talented and experienced IT staff we are repeatedly frustrated by Sirsi's inability to allow our inhouse staff to do installations and maintenance. Sirsi's installation instructions contain errors that prevent the instructions from being successfully followed. Sirsi techs know which instructions to skip or do the opposite but that knowledge is not used to correct the installation documents.
We're tired of the "if it's a useful feature, let's charge extra for it" business model that SirsiDynix and other vendors employ. Things like APIs and web services should be part of the base installation, not outrageously-priced annual maintenance add-ons. So much of our data require API access to extract, which amounts to paying SirsiDynix annual maintenance to store our data, then paying additional maintenance to extract it. We're sick of being extorted.
A lot of stagnation in what is available vs what could be done. It is time for vendors to invest lest in keeping old products running and starting from scratch with some future proof products.
Not very responsive to our needs. Heavily focused on the United States e.g. in NZ we need much better financial accounting and reporting as we have rental items and overdue charges. Also the software is VERY dated now, has no flexibility and is extremely clumsy when trying to apply current expectations. One example of this is using online registration where we still can't add a cellphone number. Lots of promises, but little delivered.
Cloud-based and integrated (really truly integrated) are on our priority list.
At this time, our [...] system is working great and Sirsi Dynix will be doing an upgrade in the near future. Our branch library in [...]is in the plan to change to the automated system in 2015. The number of items reflects both libraries.
I answered questions about customer service as straight 5s, because I haven't used SirsiDynix customer service directly. I have used their training platform. I appreciate the quantity of information it includes and the various options for accessing it. However, I wish it were more broadly accessible to staff and easier to navigate. The number of items listed in our collection is much larger this year, but I've included electronic resources that we subscribe to, which I hadn't before.
Compared to other service fields, libraries are far behind in the technology we can offer our patrons to access the information we offer. We still make it so difficult for them to use our databases, our downloadable audio & e-books, and our online catalogs.
We are satisfied with Symphony-SirsiDynix. We currently have the small library subscription which is pretty much turn-key. It functions well but the reports can be confusing. There are also several add-on features that cost more and while they would be nice additions, we cannot afford them at this time. This includes products like Director's Station, Serials, etc.
We are part of a consortium and our ILS is a hosted SaaS implementation in year 5 of a 7 year contract. We will begin looking at vendors on the next year or so.
System and data security is another area where our current ILS is not keeping up with industry standard. Alma vendor uses Gartner recommended security standards for it's cloud. Our security requirements are imposed by our parent organization.
One issue I have with Sirsi/Dynix's service model is the "around the campfire" approach they take to handling calls. You speak to one person who makes notes based on his or her level of experience and knowledge of the product and the issue being described. These notes are forwarded to another person who then suggests a course of action based on THEIR level of experience and knowledge of the product and the understand they have achieved from reading the notes. If there is any level of cognitive dissonance in the notes, the recommendation may be (and has been) flawed. Note taking is a dying skill, as is reading with comprehension.
Having worked with this company's product for over 18 years the biggest issue that continues to haunt this company is rolling out products that are not ready for production. Also there is a huge delay in fixing much needed enhancement requests and bug issues. For example, the timeline of when their Social Library product will be visible on Mobile Devices. I will have to wait until at least July of next year before it will work for 50% of the audience we are trying to reach.
I wasn't employed at my current institution when the most recent ILS was implemented, so I'm unable to answer that question.
SirsiDynix, while a good vendor overall has some problems with internal communication, and use of technical vocabularies. They seem to have a habit of misusing terms that have specific meanings, or inventing terms for things that already have established names in the technology / library sector.
Are are now in the SirsiDynix cloud with its SaaS product. We were very pleased with the migration and the problem-free functionality.
[...]
We have been a customer of Dynix since 1986 and so far, our customer support services have been excellent. Since we have such a small staff, implementing an open source ILS is unlikely at this time.
Symphony is a very stable product. We are now a hosted site and the support we have received has been excellent. The philosophy of the organization is very customer oriented and there are several programs in place to ensure our voice is heard while they are developing new products so that the end product better meets our needs. They are working very hard to stay ahead of the ever-changing face of libraries by offering new products while continuing to improve their core products.
We went live with Enterprise in September, switching from Bibliocommons. It has been a nightmare, patrons are angry, staff and library boards are upset. It is almost as if we were the first libraries to get it, but that it not the case. It's been a disaster, crashing, not showing correct information, having to be rebooted. This is the 4th month now, and things are still going on, not stable.
[...] which we belong decided on SirsiDynix.
The state library handles all interactions with the vendor as the system is implemented state-wide. We occasionally provide feedback but do not have decision-making power.
Would love to have a user friendly reporting system.
They make many promises of new functionality that never transpires
We are currently in the process of and/or discussing the addition of many new products offered by SirsiDynix Blue Cloud which may affect some of our perceptions in the future.
currently considering migration to another, academic-based ILS in conjunction with other academic libraries in Montana.
Costly for smaller institutions. Expected to pay for enhanced functionality.
SirsiDynix have a bad habit of over promising and under delivering. Their new suite of Bluecloud products is too little too late and is taking too long to deliver, and imposes too many constraints on how we operate. Symphony feels old, tired and cludgy, and the Acquisitions and Serials modules are close to unusable. Not to mention the almost nonexistent support for electronic resources in the core product, followed up by the almost exclusive focus on ebooks rather than ejournals in the bluecloud suite... We would probably go elsewhere if we had the time and money to migrate. Support staff are helpful and friendly, but we don't want a relationship with them, we want a product that works!
Intota Discovery (Summon) and Assessment are seen as an interim low-cost solution to replace the Endeca UI over the next three years. We have been unable to secure funding to carry out a comprehensive review of library systems with a view to replacing the LMS and linked services. Externally hosted ('cloud') options will be seriously considered as part of a future review. Initial impressions are that Assessment will offer little or nothing more than current MetaLib and SFX services, which will also be superseded along with MetaLib Plus, for eresources management and discovery.
BlueCloud additions will breathe new life into SirsiDynix's Symphony product.
We currently have BiblioCommons implemented as a discovery layer and are actively considering switching to an online catalogue offered by the ILS vendor instead. We are interested in learning more about the BLUEcloud modules from our vendor, as these become available.
Local support for sirsi dynix implemented in 2013, this was done to improve turnaround for faults or developments. Also, local company had necessary expertise to move to a separate dut instance of symphony - a move from consortial based system. Previous support via uk based sirsi dynix
The number of titles includes print and electronic. It includes periodical titles, but not individual electronic issues. It also includes 9 database subscriptions. We have Sirsi Symphony through a consortium or we would never have been able to afford it. The issue is we are a medium-sized library with NO IT staff and it is very time-consuming as the intricacies of the program are no overly user-friendly which has caused much frustration. We are going to begin using the Cloud Reports feature which may make things better, but I cannot say if that is true at this point.
Support issues are directed to [...] in the [...] . [...] either rectify the issue or forward it onto SirsiDynix support. [...] consortium libraries do not have any direct contact with the vendor.
Even though scores above are mid-range, I'm not sure we'd be any happier with other vendor products.
Would like to see a mobile workstation (circulation, inventory) that would work on device of our choice instead of being restricted to the hand held device that they required us to purchase - very expensive, small screen. The ability to load WorkFlows onto a tablet would be much cheaper.
We have been with SirsiDynix for 14 years and it has worked very well. We also went through a migration last year when our law school was acquired by another university. The migration was relatively painless and everyone was very helpful along the way. My sales rep and all of the employees are very easy to work with, very nice, and very professional!!
I left a couple of spots blank because I do not know about the specific terms of the contract with our ILS on whether an open source ILS is something our network would consider.
[...]
As with any automation company, there are highs and lows in expectations. We appreciate that SIrsiDynix is a robust, large company which appears to be prioritize being responsive to its customers. The implementation of new or enhanced products seems to take a long time at times. Support is quite good with quick response times. The company certainly does business with a wide range of library types.
2.5 years ago we pulled out of a consortium that was going to migrate to OCLC WMS. We wished to stay with SirsiDynix Symphony, opting to migrate to their SAAS option.
More than 2/3rds of the items in the collection are digital or only accessible online.
While SirsiDynix is not great, it is the best of the available options. SaaS is one of the most important parts of our ILS, and it has provided great value and functionality for our library system.
[...]
Generally feel that our system is ok but not great - it is not always flexible enough to meet our needs and can be challenging to get things working correctly. Open source is interesting but we don't really have the staff resources to support it.
Symphony is built on very old indexing technology that is difficult to manage.
While the current Symphony ILS is inadequate for our current and future needs, we are optimistic that SirsiDynix'x developments with the BlueCloud suite of products will get us closer to our vision. At the same time, we are encouraged by the collaboration that has begun between EBSCO and SirsiDynix, and would love to see that we would be able to integrate the two products into a fully-featured and scalable library services platform.
We went through an RFI last year to review ILS products on the market. Because of the recent merger/acquisition of Innovative and Polaris and because we saw no drastic differences between products we have decided to stay with SirsiDynix for the next 3-5 years.
Some of the developments that we would like to implement have additional costs (e.g. reporting, statistical tools). A lot of the functionality of forthcoming BlueCloud products has an additional cost. Not easy to do work on custom reports as the training for APIs is expensive - compared to other systems where it comes with the product. Difficult to customise the OPAC, set-up is quite prescriptive.
System is very stabal, we experiement no shutdown or major problem. Discovery tool work very well.
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Very good response time to issues
Our current ILS has only been used since September 1st 2014 in all 59 libraries. Before that only 4 libraries used this ILS.
We cannot influence the choice of the ILS or the ILS vendor so much. We have to follow of the tender results. That means - the winner is the cheapest one. It is more complicated of course but in a simplified way that is the current situation.
The company's biggest problem in the past has been it's tech support and communication with it's subscribers. In the past year the company has attempted to launch a new product. While the launch has not been particularly successful and the new product has some serious issues, the company's response to them and over all communication has been so much better than in the past. The communication makes up for the problems and I'm more likely to stay with the company now then before for this reason.
AutoGraphics has been our ILS vendor for 3 years now and we still have some of the same problems with functionality that we had right after migration. While customer service reps have been very kind, helpful, and understanding, the actual functionality has not improved- in some cases, it has gotten worse. Problems are not solved in a timely manner and it seems as though the last major system upgrade wasn't even tested before it was implemented-- basic and very serious problems that should have been discovered and rectified in a beta-test were passed along to the customer to notice and notify AutoGraphics about. At our specific library, which runs on under 5.0 FTE, one staff member spends nearly 2 hours per day troubleshooting and sending help desk tickets. This takes a lot of time away from other library duties.
Customer support used to be much better. They've changed their interface, which is better, but we would still rather have a product that is more customer-friendly and offers better reports.
Illuminar worked best for our needs, even though there were some issues with running reports and getting the information need. Verso 4 is not user friendly. The interface does not make a librarian's job easier. If anything, it has added steps to it that was not in Illuminar. Would rather keep Illuminar or switch then use Verso 4.
We feel like more librarians should have been involved in the process of creating this ILS.
Great source of help works great could not ask for better help or deal
This company has consistently been great to work with! Very helpful! Everyone that I have talked with there is pleasant, competent and helpful.
We have two major problems with Autographics that have led us to consider a change of systems. 1. The catalog and patron account interfaces are unattractive, clunky and difficult to decipher. A community survey indicated that a majority of library users want a change. 2. A number of unexpected modifications have been made to the fields in the patron databases that have left our systems broken. For example, whereas previously the presence of an e-mail address in that field was taken as indicating a desire to be notified by e-mail, a new field was added, "notification preference" , which defaults to "none", not e-mail. The vendor has refused to change our default to e-mail or populate our database with "e-mail" (preferred by almost all of our patrons). We are instead expected to modify thousands and thousands of records by hand. We haven't the time, so the holds notification systems has stopped working. People don't know when their holds arrive. Mysteriously other notification systems which use e-mail have continued to work. That is just one of the many surprises that have left the staff confused and frustrated.
I have already moved the ILS to [... (Evergreen)] as of March 2014. My responses were for the Auto Graphics ILS.
I understand to a point why Illuminar had to be upgraded to VERSO 4, but I don't understand why they had to make it look so different and cause more "clicks" to get the same work done. Not very happy with that.
After using the present ILS for over 2 years I feel strongly that I am just now feeling like it serves the needs of our library. I think that they overstated its capabilities when we were in meetings to choose a new ILS and that it's not as user friendly as we anticipated nor does it do the job as easily as our previous system. Just when we were feeling comfortable with VERSO they changed to VERSO 4 - in [..] we experienced some issues that caused many of us to go back to Illuminar. I am hoping that the new transition will go smoothly and that my staff can make the change without our patrons experiencing any delays is service.
We like VERSO Illuminar but we don't like VERSO 4.0.
My biggest complaint- too much wasted time because of superfluous steps for every move that we make. e.g. 5 steps to a printed copy of anything.
The reports generated are not flexible enough to meet the library's needs. Also the naming of the reports is not intuitive.
Auto-Graphics is upgrading its interface and at the moment staff is working with the new one but we haven't released it yet to patrons, as we are finding quite a few problems. A-G support is responsive to our requests but I suspect they are getting many issues reported from other libraries.
We just switched to this program three months ago. Three days after we signed the contract, we were informed that VTLS had been bought out by Innovative. The company has lost at least 25 positions and we think that this is reflected in the speed in which tech support issues are handled, however, we do not have anything to compare it against. We only used Insignia for approximately 15 months since we found it to be unstable and it did not live up to its claims.
Unfortunately, with the sale of VTLS to III, support services have gotten worse. Our last upgrade took from March, when we initiated it, to October, parts of 8 months. We hope this isn't the new norm. During that time, responses to our emails often took more than a week; I remember a 2 week delay. We haven't noticed a marked change in the program. III hasn't made it a point to get acquainted, and we find III's website to be less than instructive. For example, under VTLS global support, it says there are useful links. One of the links if to the very same page, the other is to a list of holiday observances. I trust things will get better and hope other former VTLS clients haven't experienced what we have.
The purchase of VTLS by Innovative in June 2014 may soon bring up the request for a new ILS and an ILS with web-based clients.
Most libraries in Uganda are using koha. That would make economic and technical sense to migrate.
Recently VTLS was acquired by INNOVATIVE INTERFACES (II). Polaris was also acquired by II. From what we have seen and been told there will be new developments including a discovery engine that is OPAC -centric and visualisation of authoritative and annotated data through multi- tenant architecture.
Ongoing frustration with all ILS vendors we've used--promise the sky and deliver very so-so products. Much of what is promised is actually not available but "in development". The other frustration is that ILS' seem to either have a decent customer interface and poor/clunky tech. services/staff interface or vis versa. Our repository and ILS don't play well together even tho' they're from the same company. And, I'm concerned about what's going to happen down the road with VTLS being sold to II.
We are currently in the RFP tendering stage to get a new ILS
Please note that VTLS became part of Innovative several months ago, but still functions as an independent system. We were led to believe that this will remain the case for some years to come.
VIRTUA is not improving and if it does, the pace is too slow and insufficient to cope with latest technology changes or to get a better comparison with other ILS'es. Also to benefit from the significant changes or improvements, the customer has pay additional cost. I am using this product just because I don't have a choice. This is the only product which provides local support in Pakistan. So, libraries are sort of obliged to use it because there is no other option. Its not too bad. But better ones are there. Only the companies refuse to sell them in Pakistan because they are ready to commit for the required local support,
The Library is a member of the [...] Consortium. We have almost no direct relations with the company from which we acquired the ILS, nor with its Customer support services. The choice of a new automation system will probably also be done within a consortium.
Now that VTLS has been bought out by Innovative, it seems likely that Virtua will be wound down rapidly with customers encouraged to migrate to Sierra.
We're yet to start inputting bibliographic data of electronic resources into the ILS. The library does not use open source ILS.
since acquisition of VTLS by III it is becoming quickly clear that Virtua developpement will stop. alot of VTLS people have been dismissed; support . very few people indevelopment team for now. customers are aware about nothing; very poor communication from III. the latest VTLS user's group with some III people is showing clearly that the only concern of III is a commercial one. The support has totally declined since the acquisition. they have also chosen as virtua product manager and as responsible of service at the VTLS side, 2 of the less skilly people unable to answer to anything. The vision of such a "big" company is very poor; I am not sure that they are doing any technological watch. They have nothing clear to show as new ILS devlopment: sierra is just a layer on the top of an old ILS system. they are far from a multi-tenant architecture. The prove that they are nowhere is that they are working with one people from VTLS for building an unified platform base notably on VITAL (essentially on RDF, perhaps fedora) Such a company without no real new library platform is a pity, and is showing were are the concern: money, just that. It is clear that the most quickly possible we will move into another company and make an rfp
The purchase of VTLS by III has been bad for our experinece of customer support provided since the take over. It used to be very good.
VIRTUA has been a good system but it is now lagging behind in providing latest features and not improving their product at the pace required to catch up with the competitors in the market. We are sort of tied to it due to mainly, financial reasons and secondly unavailability of vendor support for other ILS in the country.
Additional comments to questions above: We subscribe to only a handful of electronic resources, so we do not have much of a need for a system that can manage such resources. Customer support for the ILS is about the same as last year, so I rated the answer to that question as a 5. We are happy with customer support overall. We don't have a separate discovery interface, and cannot consider one due to the fact that we have no money for one. Our budget is minimal currently, and is stretched as far as it can go. When we begin to look for a replacement system--which we will need to do since our current contract will be ending--we hope that we will get a discovery interface as part of whatever system we choose.
Switching from Primo discovery layer to EDS
The procurement and implementation of a next gen system will be a multi-year project. In order to migrate to a new system we MUST have: combined ILS/ERMS functionality; support for non-MARC formats, such as MODS and MADS; linked open data functionality; and APIs to enable us to build our own solutions to meet the Library's unique requirements.
Have been impressed by the improvement in support from Ex Libris over the past year to 18 months. Much improved and probably the most responsive of all vendors I deal with
We have signed an agreement with OCLC WMS to migrate to this system in the Spring of 2015. We have not yet notified Ex Libris of this intention.
Updated the collection size to represent roughly 110,000 print/media items and 120,000 electronic items - mostly ebooks.
We are a member of a large consortium which is beginning to look for a new ILS. If it were up to us, we would be using OCLC WMS right now. In the current environment, consortia can be an impediment rather than a help to libraries who would like to customize for their current customer and staff needs.
[...]
The product fulfills its purpose. We are aware of new developments and are following those closely, some of them probably represent improved functionalities that we would welcome, whilst some of our specific requirements may not be met even with new-generation systems, at least not immediatly.
We have been on Voyager over 10 years and would like to move to a more modern system but there are not many choices for a big library like us. It looks Alma is the only possibility but I do not think it is ready for us. We will have to wait a bit longer or go with Alma if we can get extra budget.
We are tied to West [...] and whatever they choose to do.
Ex Libris' Alma seems targeted to the very large academic libraries. It's a whole lot of software (and very expensive) for the smaller academic libraries.
We are currently in the process of signing a contract with OCLC for WorldShare Management System and WorldCat Local/Discovery. Implementation will probably take place next year (2015).
There was a cumbersome process for submitting cases to the vendor for customer support, and few cases reached resolution in a timely manner. This process has been streamlined now, with much better communication from the vendor regarding the status of a case. Most cases are resolved, and when a solution is not possible, we're informed that the case is being submitted to a research and development team. This is a big improvement.
Tender result is due shortly.
We are already abstracting out the discovery layer to Blacklight. As the University rolls out a new financial system, we are planning to investigate moving acquisitions out of the ILS as well. That leaves only Circulation and Cataloging to replace with a new ILS.
We have been thinking about a new ILS for a couple of years now, but it doesn't seem that there is anything out there that would serve our needs AND has a proven track record.
I feel ExLibris recieves the contempt of familiarity here. That said, last year's (spring 2014) RFI cmte was completely underwhelmed by all the ILS vendor products we reviewed. There is really nothing available that inspires us in the library management system market. ProQuest's vaproware ILS was the most exciting, but as an early adopter[...] of Voyager in the early '90s we are apparently not willing to be guinea pigs for a new pitch. (I'd love to get in early and beta the PQ vaporware, but I am only one voice from 50+). Our Open Source experinece has been through the [...] consortium - which just lost its two best new-coding coders to better pay elsewhere. Hence the risks of open source appear even riskier.
We are using a product that will be unsupported after Jan. 2015. We must change products but are part of a consortium and the decision is complicated. Members represent small, medium, and large libraries and, as a group, have very limited choices. Only a few vendor products can handle a large consortium representing thousands of print and electronic recourses.
Libraries need to move beyond the traditional ILS and compete on better discoverability. (I don't have the answers, only the questions!)
We are not sure which vendors we will consider for a possible new ILS. I believe III has been mentioned, but that is dependent on many factors. We do not have the staff to implement an open source ILS.
For the most part, satisfied with what I've seen so far with Alma.
We've been on our current ILS since 1996. The feeling is that libraries our size don't fit well with the current vendor's focus, and the price point for moving to their library platform is prohibitive. WMS offers significant cost savings while adding discovery, license management, and analytics. It will also allow us to leverage the relationship we already have with OCLC and our data in WorldCat.
we have removed ebooks from the voyager ILS and applied vufind over both voyager and summon. I changed the above information, but wasn't really sure how to 'rate' Vufind vs the existing ILS (since VF is neither a discovery system nor an ILS) the first 4 questions were rating VF and the rest summon/voyager
We would like to implement a next-gen ILS, but we do not feel the products have matured enough yet. We are waiting 1-2 years before making any decisions.
The Library plans to migrate to the Ex Libris solutions of Alma and Primo, for library management and discovery, respectively. Initial work has begun in this quarter, and is expected to complete by mid-July 2015. It marks a significant business shift (as well as technological) and both changes will need to be managed effectively.
It is my understanding that Ex Libris was migrating to a new customer support system during the time we were having extreme difficulty with getting customer support. Now that they have completed the migration, service has somewhat improved but still has a ways to go before meeting expectations.
Currently an RFP for all [...] is out for bidding for a new Library Management System.
We are looking forward to the possibilities inherent in a shared library services platform across our 24-campus system to facilitate collaborative management of e-resources, reciprocal borrowing privileges, etc., that are not well supported by the standalone ILS systems.
We are now actively seeking to drive out cost from our ILS implementation. The additional tools need to manage electronic content have been acquired elsewhere and the ILS is used basically to circulate materials. Acquisitions is handled directly in university systems, cataloging could be done elsewhere, actual content is housed in other systems. The ILS is now one of several systems / databases which is being harvested into our discovery space.
The Voyager product is antiquated and does not include all of the features that we feel it should. The functionality that is there is not seamless. The Ex Libris improvements to Voyager sometimes break functions that are working. And sometimes it takes an enhancement request to get the features working again. Documentation is not updated or as clear as we would like it to be. Ex Libris does not have as good of a downtime notification system for Voyager as it does for their other products.
Voyager is old and inflexible and there is no real development going on. We are interested in looking at other options but would prefer to see a wider range of viable products in the marketplace. We will also be participating in planning for potential collaborative options at the provincial level. We use ProQuest Intota for ERM as Voyager is not strong in ERM. Voyager has mature functionality for print, but is not flexible in the ways we would expect of a new system and in our environment that is now based far more on electronic collections than print. We use the Voyager OPAC but it is not being developed. We need the discovery functionality of Summon in addition.
We are looking for a new ILS that caters for eresources workflows more efficiently than Voyager.
Voyager is not very user friendly for students or staff.
We are in the process of migrating to Alma with Primo. Our go live date is in March. I would suggest I complete this survey again next year at this time so I have time to evaluate the new system.
[...]
For reasons of integration and product support, I would expect the library system's ILS and discovery service layer be from the same vendor. This would allow us to take full advantage of the functionality and maintenance/service.
The cost will be the top priority in the selection of a new system. That is why I responded that we would consider open source.
Cost is the biggest factor in considering a new ILS right now. Our consortium is starting to split up and go different directions which will likely increase our hosting costs. Our collection is small enough and our OPAC gets little enough use that going with a more expensive ILS is hard to justify even though some of the features of newer, more expensive systems would be nice to have.
[...]
We get our ILS through our library consortium, and we are happy with that arrangement. The consortium is planning to upgrade the ILS in Summer 2015, so we will be involved with that. Regarding the discovery service, it is not very functional in integrating with our ILS, especially as implemented through the consortium. If users are looking for books specifically, we always direct them to VuFind, rather than Summon.
Our catalog selection will be determined by [...].
Ex Libris' Voyager system is a mature ILS with a solid history of improvements and good vendor and product community support.
Voyager ILS will be phased out next year. Our Consortium decided to go with Alma and Primo from same company. We decided to go with OCLC WMS and OCLC Knowledge Base.
Our collection increase is due to ebook additions. If I count only physical resources our number has actually decreased.
It may not be the ILS but rather University growth and lack of resources that causes our dissatisfaction. We are seriously understaffed and in a building 47 years old. We simply cannot keep up with the growth in student body. We have a significant number of long-term staff and librarians who will be retiring in the next 3-5 years which would make a move to another ILS even more challenging. We realize we will need to move at some point and we have only just started gathering sample RFPs. We have given up on the discovery service and now need to move in the direction of an institutional repository to support a more immediate need by our MFA program. I am not pleased with ExL's decision (in both Alma and Voyager) to make multiple cataloging changes available only through rules. I just want to be able to select a range of MARC fields in a single record I am working on and delete them without having to click each individual field for selection/deletion. I do not want to have to continually do data clean up or large manipulations of records. Between this and crappy RDA, our metadata is getting worse instead of better. It is very frustrating the way RDA has been forced on smaller libraries. I have had to stop all Marcive authority loads so it doesn't blow up Voyager's global headings change queue. I really need Voyager to help me out, and it's really not fitting this bill. I have worked with Voyager for 16 years and I will hate to see it go :-(
Overall, we have agreeable relationships with our ILS and Discovery product vendors. Both are working on next-gen web-based systems. We are watching progress in the field, and waiting to see how each develops. We anticipate a possible move in 2-3 years.
[...] has signed to migrate and implement Sierra and EDS. We will go live at the end of 2015. So replying to this questionnaire is academic at this time.
Because we are in the very early phases of implementing a new system, I answered our current system questions based on our old system. Some of the dissatisfaction with our old system stems from our inability to do software upgrades for the last several years due to the age of our current server. We are migrating from ExLibris Voyager to OCLC Worldshare Management System
Thank you for doing this, Mr. Breeding. Your website and database are very informative.
Only at initial stages of looking at a replacement system. Alma is way over the top for our needs and too expensive, given our Institute's recent financial problems.
We currently have an ILS review team in place and are conducting a market survey of ILS options. We expect to migrate from our current ILS in 2-3 years.
[...] is in the process of migration to WMS. We should be live in March or April of 2015.
The ILS is becoming less and less significant as we migrate toward electronic resources
Our library would not consider the functionality of the ILS as meeting our needs if we were not able to use third-party add-ons (e.g., Gary Strawn's programs). We are not currently planning to migrate to a new system but are keeping an eye on the market with plans to migrate in three to five years.
The Vendor's ILS is good however, their customer service does lack a great deal at times. There also seems to be little innovation from the product as of the last few years other than fixing bugs in the system but no great new features which is disappointing.
Our institution is not, at the moment, investing much in the maintenance and upgrade of our system. We function on an older version, with Vubis-Smart. The current is now a Web-based application, V-Smart. My rating is lower, but it is not entirely because the vendor is not delivering a good product, but the reality is that we are getting behind.
Winisis se distribuye gratuitamente y no tiene soporte informático. Los problemas se solucionan acudiendo a la red de usuarios.
Esta encuesta fue completada en función de que la biblioteca cuenta con un sistema de código abierto ( WINISIS- UNESCO) desde hace mas de 25 años. Se ha avanzado con el Catalogo WEb (IAH) , sin embargo falta desarrollar otros aplicaciones o modulos con ABCD (Modulo de prestamo, materias y estadisticas).
[...]
Will probably join a local consortium that uses Sirsi Dynix.
We think WMS will be a first-class product when it is fully developed. We were aware of the level of development when we implemented with our consortium, which has been instrumental in the testing and improvement of WMS functionality. We are happy with our consortium's choice of this ILS, and we anticipate a continued positive relationship with the vendor.
At first OCLC seemed to have rushed into signing libraries up for WMS and was unable to handle the amount of support tickets they were generating. The seemed to quickly realize that they needed more support people and got some which was good. However, many of them didn't know the system as well as they should. Things continue to improve and my questions are always eventually answered.
OCLC's master records are used in the process by which our holdings are ftped to our discovery service, EDS. OCLC did not mask or filter out entries into the master record like TOCs from LoC, or urls in the master record from OCLC's own ECO or even urls from an institution with its own proxying url. However, OCLC could mask such "noise" in the OPAC display. Our discovery service provider figured out how to mask such erroneous and unwanted information.
WMS functionality has improved tremendously in the past two years, and some of the issues we had are not issues anymore, as they have been fixed. We have been pleased with the improvements in support (more thorough follow-through and remediation of the problem). Reports were a weakness, looks like these are finally coming along and are very easy to use.
For a small rural library with a frighteningly small budget, WorldShare has enabled us to provide online access to patrons from their home with easy links to the State Library e-resources.
As more libraries subscribe to WMS, the product requires more from OCLC to adequately maintain it. Subscribing libraries need to see it as a cooperative with member advisers.
Total from last survey did not represent all electronic items. Reporting mechanism changed and now reports on that #, which is why the huge difference from last year to this year.
We like the cleanness of WMS (very easy to learn to new staff, especially students). We like the ideas OCLC has about the 'worldshare' future. We like the fact that the system is hosted and does not bring any support-issues (incl. downtime) or -cost with it. We like the promises of collection manager, vendor management etc. What was a disappointment was the lack of functionality especially regarding the management of e-resources and the responsiveness of OCLC-USA to 'Dutch' questions, although we were a launching customer for Europe. The Dutch branche tries its best, but seems to have not enough of a foothold at HQ in Ohio. There are quite severe issues also with matching & merging that need to be sorted out as well as with handling of multiple copies (e.g. for students in open stacks, but also in the depot), where WMS cannot make a proper distinction. After accepting WMS we had to *increase* staff effort, instead of decrease. This has leveled off by now, but we are not yet able to harvest on workflow optimisation etc. We were probably a bit early and WMS was definitely not ready for reality in a (European) academic library. We did manage to make interfaces with our IDm and financial (SAP) system, though. So we more or less 'forced' WMS into modality.
Customer support is great when the issue can be solved easily but if the vendor doesn't have a solution, it may take weeks before we hear back from the vendor. there needs to be a better follow-through process.
We are part of the beta testing for the next version and feel that our suggestions are valued and acted on.
OCLC WorldShare Management Services is still developing all the services and support to be a great ILS. The cost of WMS makes having a cutting edge ILS and discovery interface possible when other vendors are charging way too much for add-ons that should be part of a normal ILS.
The OCLC WMS product with WCL/WCD, KB and AtoZ resolver has worked as expected, but we were negatively surprised at how OCLC migrated Serial records to the product. This appears to be due at least in part to the cloud based nature of this LSP (your term Mr. Breeding). Migrated serials holdings were input in order of earliest items from our old ILS, with no option for switch OR notification that this was to be expected. Worse yet the ongoing check-ins present issues based on the source of the data input by the 1st library to check in the issue for a title. In addition the limitations of Acquisitions and Inventory are glaring. No true inventory function is available (doesn't seem to be on their Roadmap rollout chart). As far as we can tell no direct ordering is possible via WMS using recognized library vendors/partners. Finally the most telling issue with support for the product has been the triage via OCLC general support (even if the WMS support email is used). The 'frontline' technical support staff respond, take messages, communicate internally with WMS product specialists and reply to us after consultation. This creates some challenges in terms of timely responses and things 'falling thru the cracks'. The staff are all polite and have good general product knowledge re WMS/WCL/KB, but when we initiate a call with Tech Support it’s because we’ve encountered an issue that we couldn’t resolve thru reviewing product literature or examining our current configuration. Therefore the type of help we need is beyond the abilities of frontline support staff. We are grateful for the introduction of online ‘office hours’ for WMS modules (e.g. KB & WCD). OCLC has also solicited feedback re WMS via emails requesting survey participation. It’s clear the WMS product is BETA, but I remain satisfied that it was our library’s best option given the legacy status of our old ILS (Sirsi/Dynix Unicorn- NOT Enterprise) and our budget limitations. We are a library that did NOT save any $ through the switch to WMS. However, we did gain additional technology resources (discovery product, acquisitions module, branch library component) through a relatively modest increase in spending for our automation platform. My colleagues are probably less enthusiastic and the Sept/Oct 2014 Technicalities article by David Banush brings up the ways that flaws of discovery based automation products actually are a dis service to effective Reference and resource management.
With WorldShare our users have the ability to search a discovery database that contains over 7 million records and that number continues to grow.
We have been live with WMS for several months now, and are pleased with the basic functionality post-implementation (circ, KB, metadata). With incremental developments in Acquisitions and Analytics released, I feel the system will be much more robust than it is currently. But I do feel WMS is closely matched to our automation needs.
Plan to migrate to WorldCat Discovery in summer 2015
We will be in production with WMS in Dec. 2014. Support comments relate primarily to the migration process, which has been excellent. Our timing was good with respect to print resource management as Record Manager was released before we started and seems to be coming along nicely.
“The ILS that our library is using at the moment is WMS, OCLC´s software. It covers most of the library needs. Even if some modules are still under development, the system is upgraded every three months, adding features that improve the ILS quality. WMS is user friendly and easy to use. Ever since we have started working with WMS the library´s workflows are much better and we save lot of time. Last year, thanks to local support staff recruitment, the resolution of incidents has improved notably.”
Additional 700,000 ebooks available thanks to the open source integration in the knowledegbase
We went live on WMS only 1 1/2 months ago. Thus far, we have been very impressed with the support we have received. There are definitely functions that we miss from our old ILS, but we knew that would likely be the case. Living without some functionality is OK, but other missing functionality is highly frustrating.
[...] Library just migrated from SirsiDynix Workflows to OCLC WMS earlier this year in Spring 2014. The migration and implementation process had a few bumps but OCLC's implementation manager was helpful and responsive. Currently, we have been live with WMS for 6 months. We have experienced several service outages and continuous bugs/issues with WMS. OCLC customer support is responsive, however most of the time when the issue is reported there is no resolution. Often there will be no resolution for months until OCLC implements system updates. It is good that OCLC continues to improve WMS but we really would like to see the improvements faster than waiting for months. Currently, the main issue we are experiencing with WMS that is inadequate is their statistics report which is often missing, inaccurate data or just plain confusing because the reports/data are stored in so many different places. Overall, WMS provided more functionality to support our collection management and circulation than SirsiDynix Workflows. Therefore, in comparison, though WMS is not working perfectly, it is still better than our old ILS and the customer support with OCLC is much responsive than SirsiDynix.
too early to say, we did not implement it yet
WMS is a nice, concise ILS. It is usually intuitive and new features and enhancements are added quarterly. We are in the process of evaluating WorldCat Discovery as we will be switching from WorldCat Local to Discovery in 2015. Currently, there are one or two hiccups. When there are similar e- and print resources in Discovery, the print seem to disappear. (WorldCat Local is similar but the print does appear in fewer steps.) Other than that, Discovery has a responsive web design, which will be crucial for us to better to reach our students.
As stated in a note above we just have finished migrating to WMS. We don't have a great deal of experience with the system yet, so I feel my answers are based more on our migration experience rather than actual use of the system.
Our previous vendor, offered us an expensive package of "exit services" consisting of functions that they had not charged for in the past to my knowledge. These services were to extract marc and local holdings info together, but I was able to largely duplicate them in excel and marcedit.
We are currently in the process of migrating to OCLC's WorldShare Management System from Ex Libris's Voyager ILS, and so can't speak as to our satisfaction with the system itself. However, our experience with customer support as we go through the migration progress has been excellent.
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