January 21, 2003
We are currently waiting for a new price quote and contract from Sirsi for the migration to their Unicorn system for circulation and technical services software. Sirsi is the company that purchased DRA, the vendor of the system we are currently using. We need a new quote to include automating Fond du Lac at the time we migrate all of the current WALS libraries. Our target date is late 2003.
In the past months we have done telephone interviews with several sites that were formerly using DRA Classic, the software we use now, and have moved to the Unicorn software. They have been very helpful with information about how their changeover went, problems they encountered, and suggestions that will make the process smoother for us. Some of the suggestions have financial implications, so we are taking time to include those details in our contract.
The migration will be a lot of work. It will take a great deal of planning. It will mean change for everyone but the change is a necessary foundation for new features and services that we want to be able to offer in the future.
Moving to Sirsi will not mean keeping everything we use and like, fixing all of the things we don’t like, and then adding new features and capabilities. The new system will be a different system, with its own advantages and disadvantages. Since our current system is written to run on an older operating system, it will largely stay as it is. The only potential for new things is with the new software.
We intend to keep the Web catalog interface that we are now using. It will be changing soon, and it will change some again later with Unicorn. The continued modification is necessary to add new features. It is also necessary to do updates to stay on a version that is supported by Sirsi. The public catalog that will be used with Unicorn will be as similar to the before-migration version of the catalog as we can make it. This is being done so that users will be familiar with it and the staff that works with the public will have one less thing to contend with as we make the changes in the rest of the software. Sirsi has another, very different, public catalog option, IBistro, that we can explore after we make the changes in the circulation and technical services software.
We are continuing to follow the developments that Sirsi is making with its software. The next announcements will be made at the ALA midwinter meeting at the end of January. More details will follow at the Sirsi annual meeting in March.
Attached is a migration timeline, along with WALS non-migration tasks and projects for 2003. The date for actually switching to Sirsi has NOT been determined—It is part of the contract negotiations. The information is shown to outline the major steps and the November changeover is our target date.