Polaris Provides Patron Privacy

With the profession grappling with government intrusion into library use, it may fall to the automation vendors to provide solutions. Perhaps the first step comes from Gaylord Information Systems. Among the improvements being offering in the forthcoming release of Polaris 3.0 is the ability for libraries to provide patrons with the option of storing or deleting records of items they have checked out. Due out in the second quarter, 3.0 also features a personal search agent, which lets a user save previous searches that can be rerun automatically; patrons will be notified of new results via e-mail. The new release also will incorporate EBSCO's NoveList readers' advisory product (EBSCO recently selected a Polaris system to catalog titles for NoveList), as well as expanded virtual reference capabilities, multiple hold requests, and Unicode support for Arabic, Hebrew, and CJK characters. Polaris 3.0 currently is in beta-testing at Oregon's Washington County Cooperative Library Services.

Gaylord also has cut a deal with B&T for an infusion of book jacket images, tables of contents, and book reviews lifted from its Content Café into the Polaris PowerPAC. Content Café includes more than one million ISBNs with jacket images, 400,000 tables of contents, and 150,000 full-text reviews as well as similar information for CD, video, and DVD titles. All of these records will be linked to the MARC data in PolarisPAC. PowerPAC also is now available in 115 languages.