Conference Report: Gaylord Releases Enhanced Polaris PowerPAC at ALA

Gaylord Information Systems (GIS) made a strong showing at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in Atlanta, June 14–18. The vendor came armed with an updated product plus a clear vision for its own future as well as that of the overall library automation market. On the product side, Gaylord used the conference to debut the most advanced incarnation of Polaris PowerPAC. PowerPAC offers impressive multilingual capabilities: with a mouse click it can jump instantaneously from English to any of 115 different language translations that the library can order, although some require custom keyboards. The speed with which PowerPAC can alter languages allows librarians to perform a search in English and instantly show the results to a foreign-speaking patron.

Like several other vendors, whose partnerships have been covered in previous columns, GIS sees the continued integration of third-party products as integral to future releases. Although this trend has already begun among several of the major players in the field, GIS's Anita Wagner, VP of business development, said vendors "need to move more rapidly than before" to keep the market going forward. GIS President Katherine Blauer, however, insisted that while forming partnerships and integrating other companies' wares into ILS systems will provide advancement, ILS vendors also need to keep active in developing "core competencies…vendors should know how to develop a search engine," she said. Blauer also advocates the creation of standards for products quickly making their way into libraries such as smart cards and RFID technology.

Vendor partnerships have given rise to a newfound amity among companies. While business is still business and competition is competition, Bill Schickling, GIS VP of product development, quipped that in the past, two vendors in the same room "would have been hiding behind the furniture and shooting at each other," but now they have "an interest in each other's success," which may help keep the market strong. Gaylord's partnering strategy now has links to EBSCO's NoveList and with LSSI, which will provide a connection to a live reference librarian.