Surviving shifting ILS

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Surviving shifting ILS

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1morwen04
Mar 9, 2016, 4:44 pm

So my library this month is changing from Polaris to Sirsi Dynix. Thankfully we are being able to train on Sirsi Dynix before we go live but I have to say I hate it. My brain and Polaris run along the same frequencies and I really love working on it. On the other side, my brain wants to create words to describe how unusable, inefficient, and non-intuitive I find Sirsi Dynix and I fear the switch.

Has anyone experienced a switch they loathed? Did they eventually acclimate to it? How did you survive the change?

Does anyone use Sirsi Dynix? Can you give me helpful insider information?

2tardis
Mar 9, 2016, 5:59 pm

Which of Sirsi's products are you on? Symphony? Horizon? Bluecloud? And what do you do with it - cataloguing? Acquisitions? Circ? My main experience is in cataloguing with Symphony, so can't make suggestions for the rest. Well, I've used Circ quite a bit, too.

We switched from DRA to Sirsi many years ago. These things always come with challenges. Sirsi didn't (still doesn't) handle authority control as well as DRA did, but nothing else was worse - just different. We got used to it. As we will likely get used to Bluecloud when we switch to that in the future.

My suggestions, if you're also using Symphony are:

1. Create your own toolbar that has only the functions you use on a regular basis. The canned toolbars are terrible, IMO. Mine is grouped into sections:
Common Tasks (has Checkout, Discharge, Check Item Status)
Titles (has Add title, Modify Title, Duplicate Title, SmartPort)
Call Numbers and Items (has Call number and Item Maintenance, Add item, Edit Item, Global Item Modification, Transfers, Label Designer)
If I did much with acquisitions, serials, or authorities I would add sections for those, too.

2. Right click on every wizard and set the default properties to whatever is most common for you and at the top click "Never" so it doesn't display when you start the wizard. That gets old fast. Also on the "behavior" tab for any wizard that adds items, UNCHECK "autogenerate temporary XX call numbers" and "autogenerate item ID when adding item" because you can't save a record in Symphony without those two fields, and I saved more than a few records accidentally before I caught that trick. When you log out it will ask you if you want to save the properties and you should say yes. You can always change them on a temporary basis if you're doing a big pile of Annual Reports or Reference items that have different properties than your default.

3. In the top bar, click Preference, then Desktop Setup and you can set your preferred colour scheme (I like "spring" :) ) and then make sure "tabbed windows" is checked. Makes it a lot easier to switch between wizards if you have several open.

4. The other thing is check the box that allows multiple wizards to be open at the same time. I can't find where that is right now, but you should be able to check Help or ask your SIRSI trainer.

Good luck!

3timepiece
Mar 10, 2016, 2:25 pm

It doesn't matter which ILS you're switching from/to, you always hate the new one. Because the ILS migration process is always unmitigated hell. Even just switching jobs to a system that's new to you is not fun.

SirsiDynix Symphony (probably all Sirsi stuff, IDK) takes some adjust to for the way they use special "users", so you can't just change a location, you have to "check out" to a special user (like Discard, or Repair, or Display, etc.). Once you wrap your mind around that, it becomes much easier to work with.

There are several very helpful mailing lists, that often explain things better than the Client Care site: https://support.sirsidynix.com/listserv

4morwen04
Mar 11, 2016, 11:12 am

Currently we are not on any Sirsi Dynix yet (switch over begins 3/21) and the training we are on is just the WorkFlow, whatever that means. According to my Assistant Director (and direct boss) we were supposed to be getting Bluecloud but that isn't ready yet so I think we are getting Symphony to start with. I do a bit of everything around here but I don't often do much checking in (sorry discharging) or checking out. I do a lot of looking up items for patrons and I do some cataloging, mostly just adding/deleting/modifying item records and I work the info/ref desks. I haven't even been able to train on creating item records yet because the workflow is not set up to allow that. And let me just say I am not a big fan of how the information is presented of the limitations on searching I'm running into (but I think these are just because of the limitation of the workflow and I am praying they are different when my boss sets up our parameters).

Thanks for the tips about creating customized toolbars and wizards (ugh even the vocabulary is completely different, I feel like someone should create XILS to YILS dictionaries for us all) but it honestly wouldn't surprise me if I wasn't allowed to do that. My library is part of a co-op and so some things we have control over at library level and some things we do not have control over because either the controlling entity decides (because they are the ones paying for it) or Directors vote on it, and while this sounds like a thing we should really be able to decided at library level you just never know.

The couple of things that have me really cringing is that apparently (according to my boss) you can't do bulk changes. Is this true? Because we don't use Serials but I do catalog the magazines and so every day pretty much I have 8-20 magazines to change from non-circulating to circulating and this was super easy and fast in Polaris but if I have to do one a time it's going to be easy and take a long time. And also the pulled holds list.... is there any possible way to not print out 10 or less books per page?

In addition to all of this, and this is the thing that always screws us over thank you to our IT department, my library doesn't have PCs for staff to use, we use thin clients. Software companies never have any idea what that means. In order to get Sirsi Dynix to work for circulation the circ desks are getting full PCs but there has been no mention of staff also getting them and there has just been hemming and hawing when I have asked. To be fair we did just get upgraded thin clients so I can see why they don't want to or don't have the money for staff PCs (but also IT doesn't want us to have them for some reason)

Oh but can you tell me because the training manual we have and the videos to go with it just glossed right over this. If I want to put a hold on a specific item is that a copy hold? Polaris called these item specific holds which I like the very non-confusing straight-forwardness of that. Copy hold vs Title hold is just very non-intuitive to me.

5tardis
Mar 11, 2016, 11:52 am

Workflows is the back-end staff client. I don't know anything about how it works in a thin-client environment, so can't help there. Pretty sure that some properties/defaults can be set at the server level. I work in a consortium environment, and we did set some things at the consortium level, so ask about it.

Not true about bulk changes! Use the Global Item Modification wizard, set the parameters you want to change (and you can change multiple things at once), and scan in the bar codes. It's very fast.

RE: holds: I don't do a lot of front desk work, but as I understand it, title holds mean that the first available item on that title will be used to fill the hold. You can place specific item holds, though - for example if you want only volume 2 of a multi-volume set, or a specific year of an annual.

6morwen04
Mar 22, 2016, 12:58 pm

Thank you for letting me know about the Global Item Modification. I still have no idea how to make an item record (which is a large part of my job) and I am not going to know before we go live on Friday so joy.

TPTB at my library have decided that a) everyone is going to be self-taught and b) that we get to be open while we change over systems. IDK if anyone else has ever tried to just learn a new system isolated from everyone else and without anyone who knows what they're doing to help you but it's frustrating and some people aren't good at it.

Being open while not having an ILS is terrible and literally the only reason we have been given is that "that's they way we've done it before".... Because policies never need revisiting. I'm mostly just very frustrated and bored.

7tardis
Mar 22, 2016, 1:29 pm

>6 morwen04: Self taught? That's silly! We did SO MUCH training, starting with "train the trainers" sessions with Sirsi staff. Now, if existing members get new staff, their library is responsible for training them in-house, but there's always help available, and whenever a new library joins (not that often these days) trainers are provided from existing member libraries.

I'm sorry I'm not at work, but if you still want them next week, put a message on my profile with your email and I'll send my training script. It may be a bit out of date as it has been a while since I did any training, but might still be better than nothing.

8DanieXJ
Mar 22, 2016, 4:13 pm

>6 morwen04: Yeesh. The one time I've switched over ILSes at a library where I worked we were open while we were training, but, I mean, the trainers got quite a bit of training at the Consortium level (our entire Consortium was going through the ILS switch), and then we the rank and file got... I think it was something along the lines of 6 months of training in and around our work schedules.

We were going from Millennium to Evergreen. And the trainers (I think both at the Consortium level and I definitely know that they were at my library's level) were amazing. They just kept doing the sessions again, and again, and again, and we'd have review sessions where we'd go over stuff that we'd gone over a month before, and at the time it seemed so stupid and so pointless and as if they thought were were idiots. (Hint: They didn't think that at all).

And then we finally went live, and holy crap except for the usual hiccups (most caused by the actual program and not by those using it) it was so amazingly smooth I was astounded.

So, some virtual good luck to you >6 morwen04: I hope that it gets better, and that those on this forum can help a little too.

9nytbestsellers
Mar 23, 2016, 9:51 am

In addition to the Global Modification wizard, there's also the Item Group Editor, which is not turned on by default, your sysadmin would have to request it be enabled by Sirsi. But you can search for groups of items by location, item category, and date and then make changes. Definitely worth looking into. Look it up in the help files. But it is an *item* search, not title, so you can't search by title characteristics (like MARC fields).

Also, your holds list - you should be able to figure out a list that uses one of the reports with a print tab, so you can specify exactly how much you need printed. Though honestly, even the minimum would probably be at least 3 lines per item, and you wouldn't get much more than ... 20? per page.

And self-training is just ... nuts. Are they at least paying for some of the online courses from Sirsi?

10morwen04
Mar 23, 2016, 10:32 am

I don't know quite how to break this to everyone but nope no trainers or professional videos. Some of TPTB got trained by Sirsi people but they are not now training us on it. TPTB printed out one copy of what they thought were the pages from the manuals that we would need and we can read that copy while trying to figure the system out. We were sent links from the (this is not sarcasm) wonderful people at the SEO Consortium (in Ohio)(if you are on here thank you) who put up training videos that they created on YouTube, but that's it. We've had about 4 weeks of being able to train on Sirsi and if your job meant that you had desk time you had to fit training into that time (we're short about 5 staff members so desk time has been at a premium and you can guess how much training we've been doing) and if your job doesn't include desk time you were given an hour a week.... So I am flabbergasted at all the training you got.

I do alright with just clicking around but some things just aren't intuitive and I don't know the Sirsi equivalent from Polaris for fields yet so for awhile, at least, it's going to take me much longer to just do my job.

We did figure out that if you copy and paste the holds list into a spread sheet you can get it to work more or less how we did before but with less information available and exceedingly less efficient than we had before (less information available and less efficient are a common themes in this transition)

>7 tardis: I think I'm going to take you up on that offer so look out for a message from me.

>9 nytbestsellers: I'm not really sure if I'll be able to take advantage of the Item Edit because I'm not sure exactly how it works because the language for Sirsi is so different from what I'm used to. Not to mention we may not be able to turn that option on.

11nytbestsellers
Mar 23, 2016, 12:26 pm

Well, since you use LT, just remember that basically, "title"=work, and "item"=book/copy, in LT terms.

There is also an in-between level, Call Number, which I think most libraries use to distinguish editions (so, for instance, in our travel section, a Fodor's book might have 2 Call Numbers, 917.304|z2014 and 917.304|z2016, and users could place holds on the specific edition they wanted. But each call number could still have multiple items, so they would have to place a copy/item hold). Some libraries (like mine), might also put multiple formats on the same title - so we have separate call numbers for paperbacks, but they're on the same title record as the hardcover so a title-level hold can be filled by either.

There is also a lot of stuff that makes it important to distinguish between Home Location (where an item is shelved) vs. Current Location (often CLOC) which might be the same as home location, but might also be Checkedout, In Processing, Repair, Shelving Cart, etc. And those Current Locations are often set by "checking out" to those special users created by Sirsi and your sysadmin (you know, REPAIR, TRACE, LOST, DISCARD, INPROCESS, etc.). The whole "special user" thing was the hardest for me to grasp.

There are at least some free training things on the Sirsi Client Care site, so see if your bosses can at least get you a login for those.

12morwen04
Mar 23, 2016, 4:51 pm

>11 nytbestsellers: well you've actually explained the difference between a Title Hold and a Copy Hold in a way that actually makes sense to me. (In my old ILS you put a hold on the Bibliographic Record (all item records for that title record) or an Item Specific Hold (on one item that you selected, pretty self-explanatory) and I really appreciated that type of direct language).

Yeah I'll be honest I'm not looking forward to a lot of this but the Special User thing seems the most tedious. Like why can't I just modify the item record or like when I'm searching for an Item why can't I just put a hold on it in that same window? Why do I need to go to a different window to put in a hold? These are the small things that make me wonder who built this program.

13morwen04
Mar 24, 2016, 10:52 am

We went live today and at the risk of sounding more than half my actual age... I hate it I hate it I hate it. Why did it have to change? Everything I used to be able to do with a right click I now have to open three different windows. I hate it I hate I hate it.

14wyvernfriend
Mar 24, 2016, 1:10 pm

I empathise we changed from Galaxy to Sierra last June or so and the teething has drawn blood more than once.

We also went from single authority to multiple authority and there's a threat of adding more. May the gods have mercy on our souls.

15morwen04
Mar 24, 2016, 5:22 pm

Ok it's later in the day and I will give credit where credit is due. It is easier to add a Call Number (in Polaris it was add Item Record which initially caused some confusion) in Sirsi Dynix than it was in Polaris.

16nytbestsellers
Mar 25, 2016, 2:26 pm

Finding things that are easier/better than the old system will probably go a long way to making the transition psychologically easier.

17morwen04
Mar 31, 2016, 11:46 am

Right it's a week later and I think we are all more or less used to our new reality here... At the very least the staff here (less the managers down but us below management people) is good about communicating with each other when we figure out something that other people haven't quite figured out. (I was able to help a coworker put item specific (copy requests in Sirsi Dynix) in for a patron yesterday). My library has also fielded a couple of questions from other libraries in the Co-Operative (who had actual training sessions) so that makes me feel a bit better about how we are handling the transition overall. Still it is taking a little bit longer to do most things and it's hard to know if it's just that I'm still getting used to Sirsi Dynix or it things just take a little longer. Thanks for everyone's advice and encouragement!

18navistar96
Ago 31, 2017, 1:03 am

tardis- hello. i see you posted some helpful sirsi directions. do you have any sirsi notes?

19tardis
Ago 31, 2017, 8:26 am

>18 navistar96: I retired a few months ago, so I've nothing. Sorry. I didn't love SIRSI enough to keep copies of my scripts. Also, since they were written a few years ago, they were not completely up to date on the latest changes.

20DanieXJ
Sep 5, 2017, 9:47 am

Honestly, Sirsi basically just sucks. Maybe BlueCloud (instead of Workflows) will be better, maybe it won't. I guess at least the Cataloging part of BlueCloud is sorta out and sorta not out at the moment?

>19 tardis: I don't know, looking at what Sirsi is at the moment, I have no doubt that even if they had been written a few years ago, those scripts were totally up to date with changes.

21morwen04
Sep 5, 2017, 11:52 am

Original OP here.... Sirsi is terrible. We've given up on Bluecloud ever coming and are counting down the months until our contract is up (17 more to go!).

22DanieXJ
Sep 6, 2017, 7:27 pm

>21 morwen04: I have about 7 more years... so, presumably I'll get to see BlueCloud at some point or another (or maybe not, who knows). Crap I loved Evergreen.

23racerx
Nov 30, 2018, 3:19 pm

I just changed jobs from a public library that used Polaris to a special library using SirsiDynix Symphony. And boy do I agree. I found Polaris so easy to work in and useful. I hate SirsiDynix! Every normal little task seems to require encountering a maze of puzzles worthy of the movie Brazil. For instance, just getting it to print out a partial shelflist is proving extremely hard to figure out. Its contract is up next year. I am hoping to help find a replacement.

24WeeTurtle
Nov 30, 2018, 6:49 pm

In the last semester in my library tech education and SirsiDynix is the name I hear a lot. I believe it's one of the more commons ILSs around here. That and Evergreen. More then SirsiDynix I hear complaints about Evergreen, but I've done okay with it so far, as like the OP said, my brain and it seem to run on like wavelengths.

Evergreen, at least, also has a training server that we've been using in class to practice with.

25morwen04
Dic 3, 2018, 6:30 pm

>23 racerx: I'm not exactly sure what you mean by shelflist but we had to create a workaround to print out our holds list which was great fun (also not being about to right click to copy/paste v.v. annoying) so look forward to creating workarounds.

I often think back fondly on polaris and being about to do better, more efficient, searches. I have to ask my boss to run a report whenever I need say all the libraries that owe us money (I do the ILLs at my library). I remember when I could just do that search myself in polaris.

I'll just add that it's been over two years and my coworkers still come up to me and ask how to do things like put a hold request on one specific item. Yay.

26DanieXJ
Dic 4, 2018, 8:23 pm

>23 racerx: Anything. Up to, literally, using pen and paper again.... Anything.....................

>24 WeeTurtle: I've used Evergreen, and still use it in my part time job (Full time one is the one with Sirsi... ugh...)

Anyway.... Evergreen can be bad if your Sys Admin doesn't set it up right. For example. One quick change that makes everything better is changing the screen stuff from vertical to horizontal. Making the Info entered be on the bottom of the screen, and in the top of the screen the result of the search or whatever on the back end. When I started using it, the default was vertical with the info showing up on the right and the searching on the left... and once my consortium found out it could be changed, boom, it made all the difference.

I mean, all ILSes are only as good as those who set them up/use them, but, honestly, with all the work that's going into Evergreen (it being open source) while I still haven't seen BlueCloud anywhere and the backend of Sirsi is about 20 years old.... maybe it's not perfect, no ILS is going to be perfect, but, it's a helluva lot better than SirsiDynix's Workflows....

>25 morwen04: Yep. Workarounds are the name of the game. Ugh...

27lesmel
Dic 9, 2018, 1:45 am

After six months of blood/sweat/tears, we go live on Alma/Primo VE on Monday. We are six days behind schedule & have discovered a really ugly data problem that couldn't be fixed by another delay even if we could delay. Now comes my new normal: at least a year of fixing things, making adjustments, & teaching new workflows. I can say the one thing that iritates me to no end in Alma is "letters" -- which covers patron-facing & staff-facing notifications. It is stupid ridiculous how convoluted it is to change the wording or even to know what letter is triggered when.

28Cynfelyn
Dic 9, 2018, 4:36 am

>27 lesmel: Good luck on Monday. My library uses Alma/Primo for its printed books, but because they do not support structures very well, we also have Atom clamped on the side for the archive department, initially served up to the public on Primo. All in a bilingual environment.

I see Houston Public Library uses Google Translate to emulate a multi-lingual site on the fly. Do non-English speaking users find that level of service acceptable, or does Google Translate consitently drop clangers?

29morwen04
Dic 14, 2018, 11:45 am

Since the switch I've wondered more and more why there isn't a company run by librarians who build ILS for libraries. I mean a lot of us have degrees in library and information science. We teach coding at my library and code our websites. I'm not saying the staff here has the correct coding knowledge to build an ILS but there should be a push for more integration in schooling and in the field.

30mamzel
Dic 14, 2018, 12:48 pm

>29 morwen04: That would be way too logical! It's like inviting a library person to help design the floor plan of a library, or choose books for said library. (I speak from experience in a public school library.)

31WeeTurtle
Dic 14, 2018, 8:59 pm

>29 morwen04:

My thoughts on questions like that are always "why haven't I/you done it?" and I assume that those reasons are probably also the same with other people.

32morwen04
Dic 17, 2018, 6:37 pm

>30 mamzel: Oh man when our building was built they didn't put in power outlets where the patrons sit..... we've been able to correct that some places but still power outlets guys. Also our roof has serious leakage problems.

>31 WeeTurtle: I mean I haven't done it because of financial considerations which is probably the case for most library workers DX

33WeeTurtle
Dic 18, 2018, 4:08 am

Isn't Evergreen to a point designed by people in or close to the library science field? Though it is limited by library size.

Start a blog to get the suggestion out? (I say, while doing nothing myself. ;))

34morwen04
Dic 18, 2018, 9:32 am

A blog would really cut in to my reading time ;D

35RowanTribe
Dic 22, 2018, 11:35 am

If the implementation of Evergreen is designed by library people then their degrees need to be revoked. (signed, really unhappy with the current web-platform update and the UNREMITTINGLY STUPID pre-selected field choices for the various operations pages. Utterly ludicrous choices all around.)

36lesmel
Dic 25, 2018, 8:59 pm

I have discovered (working for the same company that develops the software MPOW uses) that the developers have no real world experience with library services. Perfect example: Alma does not send patrons a notice if the system auto-renews...only if the auto-renewal fails. Why?!

37lusetta
Jun 11, 2019, 4:57 pm

My library has been paying for SirsiDynix Portfolio but haven't used it yet. My director (who is not a cataloger) wants me to teach him a brief MARC record to use in Portfolio to begin having access to this wealth of photographs, newspaper articles and other documents that have been scanned but nothing else. At this point in time, I don't even have access to Portfolio. Can we create the MARC records in Symphony and upload them into Portfolio? Or would it be best to create the records in Portfolio? Anyone have any archives cataloging training that can point me to some simple online training for bare bones archival cataloging? Thanks!