[iBorrow] IBorrow Drops and Adds

[Al Carlson]

IBorrow Users

You may want to take notes.  There is a lot happening right now.

Let's start with the good stuff.  Citrus County is now an active iBorrow
participant, and Collier County will join us on Monday, May 5.
Did I hear an "Ooooo!" or perhaps an "Ahhhh!"?  Well, I should hope so.

Both systems are easing in rather than jumping in, so here are the
complications.
  
Citrus will begin by lending only.  That's right.  Citrus County has
been added to your list of lenders, and you should find yourself getting
loans from them any day now.
For a while, they will request only out of Tech Svcs HQ.  These will
mostly be staff tests, but for real items.  No more sandbox testing for
them!
When they get used to that and work out any bugs, they will open it up
to Reference Desk staff as a tool they can use when the patron's needs
suggest it as the best option.
When that is going smoothly, they'll open it up to their borrowers for
direct access.

Collier County will be doing pretty much the same thing.  They will
begin lending right away on May 5.  But they will ease into borrowing a
little at a time.  So, for a while, you may have to put up with Citrus
County and Collier County both lending you more than they borrow from
you.  Try to be brave about that.

Now, let's do the not-so-good-at-the-moment stuff.
East Lake, Palm Harbor, and Pinellas Park have all completed their
migration to Polaris.
That's good for the citizens of Pinellas County, but it moves them to a
library system that URSA/iBorrow cannot-at the moment-talk to.
So, as I write this, they cannot fill any new requests for you.  (They
can still fill requests they got before the migration, and they will
return your stuff.  They promised.)

But we are working with Rob Gray at Polaris on getting it and URSA to
talk to one another.
Earlier this week we were able to get past a major hurdle on their test
server.  We were able to go to the I Borrow Portal as a Polaris patron
(which the Palm Harbor, East Lake, and Pinellas Park patrons now are),
create an iBorrow user, and request a title.  If we can get that same
thing set up on the 'real' Polaris server, East Lake, Pinellas Park, and
Palm Harbor borrowers can start requesting again.  I think there is also
a way they can fill iBorrow requests, but we haven't had a chance to
really test that yet.  Remember all the glitches and strange errors that
you went through when you were first coming up on iBorrow?  Well, it's
now Polaris' turn for all that.

I'll send out updates as Email like this and also post them on Beth's
Blog.

Al Carlson
System Administrator
Tampa Bay Library Consortium
1202 Tech Blvd. Suite 202
Tampa, FL  33619
813-622-8252 ext. 223

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