Monday, August 12, 2013

Sierra Go Live Date

The "go live" date for Sierra is the week of September 23!!! 
Once live on Sierra we will no longer perform operations such as acquisition, cataloging, or circulation in Voyager.  In addition, the OPAC, UNACAT, will no longer be in use.  It is possible that some data will be maintained on the Voyager server for a short time; however, given server issues there is no guarantee that any Voyager data will remain past the transition date. 

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Getting to Know Innovative Interfaces

Innovative Interfaces Inc. (often referred to as III or “Triple I”) is an ILS vendor based in Emeryville, California.  Founded in 1978, III has a long, established reputation as a library software vendor.  Its Millennium product (think Voyager competitor) is used by thousands of libraries.  Some of the Alabama users include Athens State and Samford.  In Tennessee, for example, there are many Innovative customers including Memphis, MTSU, ETSU, etc. 

Sierra: Sierra is III’s most recent ILS iteration.  At its core is the functionality of the Millennium system; however, Sierra is more than an ILS it is a comprehensive Services Platform.  Sierra current and future features include an open database,  analytics, APIs, etc.  UNA

WebPAC Pro: III’s OPAC…think UNACAT. 

Encore:   III’s discovery platform.  This platform allows for the discovery of materials traditionally found in WebPAC Pro as well as harvested digital content, etc. 

Encore ES: III’s newest partnership, Encore ES, delivers the Encore discovery platform with EBSCO Discovery (EDS) content.  As UNA is already an EDS customer, we will adopt this version of Encore. 

Hosted: UNA’s Sierra implementation is hosted at III’s server farm in Oakland, Ca.  The great news here is that UNA does not have to maintain the hardware (servers) associated with Sierra.  Hosted offers redundancy and disaster recovery and it is all managed by III. 

Innovative Visit August 13-15

Please note that this initial visit will focus on implementation.  In my prior post I referred to it as a training visit: however, that is incorrect. 

Innovative will return in September to conduct "hands on" training.  I will post more information in the near future.