Boston Public Library’s new Polaris system went fully live for staff on Thursday, December 13. As with any major upgrade, there were a few minor technical glitches that morning that were quickly addressed. Due to the size of our holdings, however, the online catalog took a full four days to get fully in synch with the new cleaned-up database, but was able to provide up to date availability information by December 17. Staff have spent the two weeks since correcting other minor issues with data and patron accounts, especially the holds fulfillment process. We are continuing to ask for patience and understanding from library users whose data wasn’t completely migrated and may experience a delay in fulfilling holds. All in all, the migration has been a technical success and staff are finding it easier and more efficient to use, once they become familiar with some new procedures involved. We are confident that all these kinks will be worked out in the January time-frame, which means we can move on to a larger set of enhancements to our systems, expected to deploy in the coming six months.

The main functions of the integrated library system (ILS) are:

• as a catalog
• as a database
• as library staff’s main tool for checking books and materials in and out
• for acquiring, processing and storing items.

The ILS is also the brains of our technology system that allow patrons access to many other online services, too. When you sign up for a public session at one of the BPL’s computers or utilize the public printing systems, the print system has to check with our ILS to make sure you are in our system and are approved to use that computer or printer at that location. For example, only a children’s card can be used to access resources in a children’s space. The same goes for access to the WIFI system. Both our web-based public catalog, with its special search algorithm and relevancy rankings as well as its access to social network systems and our Museum Pass Reservation System need to do the same, as does use of OverDrive for downloadable books, just to name a few.

In all, Boston Public Library integrated and tested twenty-five separate systems and applications during the migration, a mixture of local and hosted systems. And, of course, we had to plan the migration so that we could stay open and offer as many services as possible for as long as possible. Some libraries close down for a migration of this size. If you were unfortunate enough to be one of the people who experienced a problem with access to systems or your record, or had a problem with your hold requests, we apologize. If you have let us know, we have probably either fixed or will fix the problem. For the vast majority of systems and users, the migration was largely invisible and successful. We are planning to continue making system improvements and adding other enhancements through at least June of 2013 as part of this overall systems migration project.