MD Polaris Users Group Meeting

http://www.polarisusersgroup.org/

MD PUG met on Thursday, May 30th at Chesapeake College. The following post will share some reminders as well as some products/enhancements that are on the horizon.

The next MD PUG meeting will be at the new Hagerstown library! The date of which is TBD.

Websites to know about and to visit frequently:

PolarisLibrary.com
is the main site for Polaris ILS. 
Come here for:
Free Webinars
Polaris Users Group
Polaris Town extranet

www.polaristown.com 
Is the extranet for Polaris users.
RELIB - contact Ann Leighton for your staff username and password
WCFL/WMRL - contact whomever we hire for Carrie's position, or Julie, or Tracy for your staff username and password.
Come here for: 1) more webinars, 2) marketing materials, 3) news and events, 4) help in general.

tour.polarislibrary.com 
Shows you what other libraries have done to customize their PAC from vanilla out-of-the-box set-ups to PACs that are extremely customized down to the very last material icon. See what your PAC could be.


What's on the horizon:

• Readers' First compatibility 
• Community Profiles (Carrie won this package at last year's PUG conference and we're currently looking for ways to implement it)
• Browser-based staff interface. Baltimore County Public Library is currently testing this. If implemented, staff could potentially provide roving, mobile check outs and other staff-client based services on tablets or other hand-held devices. Exciting!!
• Cloud-based functionality
• Enhanced mobile functionality

Product highlights: Fusion

catalog.bcpl.lib.md.us/polaris/search

Fusion: integrates digital collections into the PAC. BCPL is currently using this product with the help of volunteers who enter the images, their titles, and their descriptions. Check it out.

Product highlights: Federated Search

catalog.bcpl.lib.md.us/polaris/search

Unless you have a BCPL card, all you'll be able to do is click on the Selected Databases link beneath the search box to see which databases you could be searching all at once.

Basically, this feature let's the user search up to 10 electronic resources at once. 
Doing a science paper? Search the catalog for books at the same time you search EBSCO's Science Resource Center for news and journal articles, and your favorite online encyclopedia for an encyclopedia article!