SirsiDynix has announced a new ILS platform, Rome, coming later this year that they say will blend the best qualities of Sirsi’s Unicorn product and Dynix’s Horizon product.
Here’s how they describe Rome in the press release:
It offers integrated technology building blocks for today’s libraries and consortia, including cost-saving software-as-a-service (SaaS) hosted options, state-of-the-art portal and search solutions, new and easy-to-manage Web-based library staff software, electronic content management and presentation solutions, the broadest suite of library management and productivity solutions – and more.
Talin Bingham, SirsiDynix chief technology officer, said:
These new capabilities – such as expanded record ownership capabilities and hierarchical structures for consortia, additional international features and record manipulation functions that enable batch changes to records – will be incrementally incorporated into the Rome platform. Capitalizing on the power, breadth and versatility of the Unicorn and Horizon product families, plus new solutions that we will develop down the road, Rome will provide our customers with an impressive collection of features and capabilities built on a stable, scalable and full-featured platform. This will make Rome a firm technology foundation for the future – both for us as a company and, especially, for our customers.”
Although future upgrades for Unicorn and Horizon will not be available, the products will continue to be supported, and the company will “work with customers to plan optimal upgrade paths to Rome.”
Read the entire press release at: http://www.sirsidynix.com/Newsevents/Releases/2007/20070313_technology_platform.pdf
The Community Needs Assessment workshop is coming soon! Mark your calendar for April 11, and make sure to register by the deadline, April 1.
If you have done a community needs analysis project in the past, you already know…it’s a lot of work! But it’s a great way to understand library users (and non-users.) We need to know all we can about our communities. Up-to-date statistics – and the “people” stories that back up the numbers – are our best advocacy tools.
Here’s some good information on community assessment for small rural libraries, from the Arizona State Library: (http://www.lib.az.us/cdt/commneeds.htm)
Steven M. Cohen, on the Libraries Build Communities blog, suggests that we…
“Get out from behind that desk! How can one effectively ascertain what the community needs and what types of populations to serve if the librarian stays in the library all day. Get out into the community and take part in meetings, serve on civic boards, and be a community citizen and leader. Waiting for patrons to come into the library and ascertaining their needs is only half the picture. There may be an entire piece of the population that never uses the library. It’s easier to reach patrons that walk in the door, but they already know about the library, right? There’s probably a reason why non-library users are non-library users. Figure out why.”
I wanted to thank everyone who attended the podcasting classes in Greenville last Thursday. I appreciated all of the discussion and questions and will be sure to post FAQs to LibraryTrax as soon as all classes are finished. I have posted the PowerPoint slides as well as a sample handout to the Podcasting area of this blog. I have another handout I will try to post later this week. Both handouts can be revised and used by your libraries for future training. The remaining podcasting classes are this week (Florence - Tues; Columbia - Wed; Charleston - Thurs). I look forward to seeing some of you in those classes. Don’t forget to check out our Del.icio.us account too. Julie has been posting all kinds of great links there for all the classes! http://del.icio.us/techtracks. Have a great day!
