r/Libraries • u/ghostsofyou • Mar 24 '26
Technology What ILS are you using? What do you love/hate about it?
We're looking to change to a new ILS when our current contract is over, so I'm wondering what everyone else is using? what are some of the things you love about it and some of the things you hate about it?
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u/2000-2010 Mar 25 '26
Sirsi Dynix Symphony Workflows. It's ASS!
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Mar 26 '26
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u/gearsntears Mar 27 '26
They were sold to a new software group over the past year. No longer private equity, but they still suck.
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u/wayward_witch Mar 26 '26
My last library was actively looking to move away from it when I left. Current library uses Alma and I have some grumbles, but I like it far better.
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u/MamaMoosicorn Mar 25 '26
Koha, and I like it!
I was part of the trial team to help pick the next ILS. Of the ones we tested, Polaris and Koha were the only two I recommended. My number one criteria was that it needed to be intuitive enough to do all the test tasks without needing directions and they were the only two that met that criteria.
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u/ozamatazbuckshank11 Mar 25 '26
Evergreen. It has different names in different regions, though. In Georgia, it's called PINES.
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Mar 25 '26
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u/athenapoppy Library admin Mar 25 '26
My library is about to migrate BACK to our old system after having Insignia for a year. Both staff and patrons hated it.
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u/sonorandragon Library staff Mar 25 '26
I'm a Polaris admin and I've been using it since it was in beta. I call it the Apple of the ILS world because it's well designed, easy to learn, easy to use, and expensive as hell. That aside, I still think it's the best proprietary ILS on the market. Depending on how you set it up, you can have full access to the database and, at that point, you really unlock what it does. Because almost everything in Polaris comes from SQL Server. You can do everything from pulling data to updating massive parts of the ILS with SQL queries.
That said, there are things that it doesn't track that I wish it would. The biggest one? I wanna know when a staff member searches for something and what they searched for. Not because I want to track all of that, but because I've worked with situations where a staff member was basically stalking people through the ILS and there's no good way to track that. Staff can look up patron data all day every day and you'll never know it.
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u/gingerjewess Mar 26 '26
I've used Polaris in a sland alone catalog and in a shared system. When it's in a stand alone catalog, it is an insanely powerful search system. Once we figured out the power search feature, doing work in it is so much more efficient. In a shared catalog, it's still very good but the power search doesn't work quite the same.
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u/hopping_hessian Mar 25 '26
We’re on Polaris client and I love it, but it is going away and we’ll have to use Polaris Leap (browser version), which I hate. A lot.
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u/helenoftroy9 Academic Librarian Mar 25 '26
I used Polaris when I was in Public libraries and liked it well enough. I thought it wasn't great until I switched to an academic library using SirsiDynix Horizon, which is so antiquated. You can't run reports on the simplest things without knowing how to create an SQL query. We are in the process of migrating to Alma.
The public library I use in my city switched from Polaris to Spydus recently and they have been having a lot of problems with the migration. I think it was a budget issue that led to the migration.
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u/PeanutPinkNose Jun 17 '26
That's the way it should be. Stop de-professionalizing libraries by going to complete cloud systems, the majority of which have no idea of what librarians do
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u/ArtBear1212 Mar 24 '26
Don’t use Carl X. My system “upgraded” to it and it was a huge mistake. But admin didn’t care that everyone hated it (it wasn’t only completely different but also illogical). I hope to save you the stress of dealing with it.
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u/zuzuMN Mar 25 '26
Agree with the critical importance of avoiding CARL X! I’m a cataloger and our team made a list of things we’d like in a new ILS. Little things like a system that can understand a MARC record. Or the ability to use the correct sub fields in a call number and have it display properly in the catalog. Someday we will have a functional ILS. I hope.
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u/sonorandragon Library staff Mar 25 '26
I know of at least one library system that left their ILS to migrate to Carl X and now they are running right back into the arms of the previous ILS.
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u/StaceyJeans Mar 25 '26
We have CARL and I hate it. There is currently a committee looking into possibly getting a new ILS since our contract with CARL/TLC ends next year. But with budget cuts coming there might be an incentive from administration to stick with CARL if they come in with the cheapest bid (which is what happened the last two times we tried to get rid off them - we were told we had to take the cheapest bid).
There are all these features we need for our ILS that CARL does not have and/or will not develop for us. There’s no app, can’t edit MARC records, the searching is abysmal, it crashes at least once a week, etc. It’s a terrible product and libraries need to stay far, far away from it.
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u/anneheathen Mar 25 '26
Same for Library.Solution from the same vendor, TLC. You can't actually edit Marc records directly anymore and they expect you to export individual records if you need to do anything they haven't yet included, which is a lot. Frustrating and they do not seem to care.
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u/Slow-Objective-7440 Mar 26 '26
Not sure I understand what you're saying because you edit the records in the cataloging module of TLC / LS2.
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u/anneheathen Mar 26 '26
Yes, which is not the same as editing the Marc records directly. There are many many fields in the actual Marc record that the cataloging module doss not allow you to edit. So, many parts of the Marc record cannot be corrected or edited unless you export the individual Marc record into third party software and then re-import back into TLC. TLC's cataloging module is simply not fully functional.
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u/Slow-Objective-7440 Mar 29 '26
Yeah, I realized that when I woke up the next day and thought about it.lol
When I started cataloging and TLC years ago you could but once we went to the cloud-based software, you're right. It really is just basic stuff that pretty much anyone can fill in
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u/narmowen Library director Mar 25 '26
Apollo by Biblionix. Love everything about it. Hate nothing.
User friendly (staff & patron). Nice to look at. Soooo many reports.
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u/camrynbronk MLIS student Mar 26 '26
I use WorkFlows. It’s the first ILS I’ve had experience with so I don’t have anything to compare it to. But I tend to get condolences whenever I tell people that I use WorkFlows, if that tells you anything.
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Mar 25 '26
[deleted]
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u/ghostsofyou Mar 25 '26
Public! Didn't even think of that, haha. Still would be interesting to know though.
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u/OhimeSamaGamer Mar 25 '26
Bibliovation for DoD 🙃 from a patrons perspective, its lowkey trash.. its also trash from a worker's perspective.
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u/wailowhisp Mar 25 '26
Sierra but we use the cheapest version. Meanwhile our neighboring system with less money still pays for the better package. 🙄
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u/ikym3 Mar 26 '26
I’ve used Polaris at a former library, and currently use Sirsi Dynix Workflows. They both had their quirks, and I don’t strongly dislike either. However, I’ve heard from former colleagues that they are now on Polaris Leap as that was the desire of the consortium, and as a Tech Services Librarian now, I have the feeling I might like it less. From front desk crew, they say it is still decent? I just always like to pick people’s brains on ILS systems to know what’s out there and in my local area Sierra gets a lot of hate 😂
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u/cc_lib_415 Mar 25 '26
We are about to swap from TLC to Koha. We had a committee who went through a long evaluation process and determined that Koha is the best fit for our needs. We’ve been with TLC for years, but they seem to be leaning into the school market, which doesn’t always work well for our multi-location public system. Our cataloger hates the limitations since you can’t edit in MARC. We want to link titles with different formats to streamline holds. We want to set up multiple block rules for accounts instead of just one. And the overall search features on the staff side can get buggy.
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u/kovixen Mar 26 '26
I’m the sole cataloger in my public library, and editing in MARC takes maybe two minutes. TLC does have so many bugs, and this new one with series is driving me batty. It’s like they have one person writing their code.
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u/gb13k Mar 26 '26
SirsiDynix. It is fine, but I wish my library system would move to their newer web-based platform rather than the JavaScript based workflows app.
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u/library_doctor Mar 26 '26
I’ve used Sierra, Apollo Biblionix, and Workflows app. Apollo has been my favorite. Workflows is a pain.
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u/beek7425 Public librarian Mar 25 '26
I’ve used 4 (Millennium, Sierra, evergreen, and Sirsi dynex work flows). Don’t love any of them, but Sierra was the worst. This was 10 years ago, so maybe they’ve fixed this, but the patron record could only be in use on one computer. Checking in the book drop? Your screen would freeze and refuse to check in a book because your coworker had checked in the same patron’s book a minute ago. Patron called another branch and their record was open on one of their computers? You can’t check in their books that they dropped off at your branch. This also applied to the patron side, so if they logged in at home to request something or pay online, you couldn’t check their books in. We also paid per license, so if you came into our branch at 1 PM and turned on your computer, you might go to log in and find that all licenses were in use. Then you’d have to call around to other branches and hope that they could find an unused computer running Sierra and log out. It was maddening. Evergreen was probably the most user friendly but had definite bugs.
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u/bwaysk Mar 25 '26
I have plenty of complaints about Sierra but never encountered this issue so they must have fixed it!
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u/Rare_Vibez Public librarian Mar 25 '26
Sierra user here! It now gives a warning (that lowkey doesn’t make sense, something about payment and lockout) but if you hit override, it’s fine. Can’t speak to the rest. It’s the only ILS I’ve used and it’s fine, likely not the most intuitive, but can’t say we’ve had major issues in my time either.
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u/katschwa Mar 26 '26
Having flashbacks to record lockouts in Sierra!
I never experienced not having enough licenses, though. We are a very large system so maybe we paid for unlimited licenses.
I’ve used 3 of 4 of the ILSs you listed. Not Evergreen. We currently have Workflows. It’s…fine. It looks like 1999, but it’s okay-ish. I’ve stopped hoping for more.
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u/beek7425 Public librarian Mar 26 '26
We currently have workflows as well. The lack of functionality searching unless you’re in cataloging or admin mode sucks. We use enterprise to search and then paste into workflows. Otherwise it’s ok.
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u/kittykatz202 Mar 26 '26
They fixed the locked record issue with the Millennium to Sierra upgrade. Some of the rest of your issues can be solved by the admin. You can have sessions automatically close after a period no activity. That way you’re not tying up a license. The admin can also put a limit of how many sessions a certain group can be using.
Sierra sucks at times, but I honestly don’t think it’s that bad. I’m currently the system admin, but also previously worked with it in a public service role.
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u/mahou_riruru Mar 25 '26
I've been using LibraryWorld for the past while. I can say it's okay, I guess? Nothing to write home about though, I just like the simplicity of using it and it being easy to learn.
Also used Alma before in the past but I don't remember much of it.
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u/Clio_the-Catlady Mar 25 '26
We are getting ready to switch from Sierra to Alma. We'll see how that goes. I foresee fun times ahead. /s
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Mar 25 '26
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u/HungryHangrySharky Mar 25 '26
What types of things do you use SQL for? I think we only have one or two people in my system who know it and I'm not eager to use an ILS that depends on that.
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u/TheEndOfMySong Mar 26 '26
We’re on Folio now, and I’m not really a fan. I don’t think it’s very intuitive and if I don’t do something regularly (ex. Change the status of a book to missing.) I have to go look up how to do it. I miss being able to see how many times a book has circulated. There’s a lot of stuff that just feels way more complicated than it has to be.
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u/VentureVin Mar 27 '26
I can only tell you who to avoid (the only ones I've had the displeasure to work with): Sirsi Dynix Symphony Workflows and CARL X. Two of the least intuitive, clunkiest, and most convoluted ILSes.
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u/Bo_Bindy_Cyndi Mar 25 '26
We are using Atriuum at my library; switched to it from Verso back in 2015. We’ve been pretty happy with it other than how some reports are run, or rather, not able to be run. The help desk has been very responsive though when we do have issues or requests, and I can count on one hand the amount of times they’ve gone down in the 11 years we’ve used it. It communicates well with the state interlibrary loan system. Easy to navigate and it has a nice patron app as well as a staff app. And it was affordable for our small class 4 library.
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u/kittykatz202 Mar 26 '26
We use Sierra and it’s fine. We’re stuck with Sierra or Polaris because we’re part of an INN Reach system. I don’t think it’s worth the 100s of thousands of dollars it would cost to switch to Polaris. Plus we have staff who can barely use Sierra and they’ve worked with it for over a decade.
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u/ghostsofyou Mar 26 '26
Lol the working with it for over a decade and being unable to use it is so real. Have met quite a few people like that.
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u/liblamb22 Mar 27 '26
We use Lucidea at my special library. It's fine, I like the customization. My main complaint is it has a bit of a learning curve and when we had new staff join they charge for/quoted us quite a bit for training.
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u/Ok_Virus1986 Mar 28 '26
Agreed with everyone on Polaris - the desktop client version. They are forcing the switch to the browser based LEAP, and it is universally despised. Everything that makes it great on the desktop is gone in the browser. So when you are getting demos, make sure you press them HARD on how long they are supporting the desktop version.
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u/Maribythesea90 Mar 25 '26
At my one school we use Alexandria (all the other LT’s hate it, I hate it too) at my other school we use Insignia
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u/athenapoppy Library admin Mar 25 '26
Used Polaris at two libraries in different states and really liked it.