[SWANboard] Illinois Heartland Message About Polaris & III

SWAN Board, At the RAILS Consortia Committee yesterday, Paul Mills from Fountaindale/Pinnacle noted that Leslie Bednar from Heartland wrote a message to the SHARE group about the Polaris acquisition by Innovative. SHARE is running on Polaris so they needed to provide some message to their libraries. Aaron Skog SWAN Executive Director 125 Tower Drive Burr Ridge, IL 60527 Phone: 630.734.5122 Fax: 630.734.5056 aaron.skog@railslibraries.info<mailto:aaron.skog@railslibraries.info> http://support.swanlibraries.net http://www.illinoisheartland.org/?q=content/article/moving-forward-together… April 4, 2014 An open letter to IHLS members The spring winds brought news of change in the library software world. Polaris Library Systems was acquired by Innovative Interfaces Inc. on April 1. As the integrated library software (ILS) platform for the SHARE Consortium, this news was troubling to some members and curious to others. IHLS signed a solid, 7-year contract with Polaris in June 2012, and that contract remains intact. We intend to honor this contract fully and expect Innovative Interfaces Inc. to do the same. In fact, the president of Innovative, Kim Massana, acknowledged there are no plans to sunset the Polaris platform. The news of the merger reminds me that I am grateful the strength of our IHLS organization lies in our relationships with each other, our members' deep commitments to resource sharing and serving patrons in our service area, and the accuracy of data within the SHARE LLSAP database. Our core values are shared by our stakeholders--IHLS member libraries, the Illinois State Library, the Illinois library community and library patrons in the southern half of our state. We are an organization built on collaboration and the delivery of innovative and accessible library services. Software vendors will wax and wane, and the services they offer will evolve. In our several decades of shared library automation in Illinois the true constant is our desire to provide improved resource discovery services to patrons and support to the member libraries who serve them. As library systems in Illinois reach their 50th anniversary in 2015, the automation opportunities for libraries are robust and varied. Alphonse Kaar wrote "The more things change, the more they stay the same." An apt sentiment for reflection as we move happily toward an enlarged SHARE organization. Polaris press release: http://www.polarislibrary.com/news/innovative-acquires-polaris-library-syst… III press release: http://www.iii.com/pr-iii-polaris