Innovative Announces New ILS, with Eye Toward Accessible Data

At the recent Innovative Users Group Annual Conference in San Francisco, Innovative Interfaces (III) president Neil Block announced the development of the Sierra Services Platform, a new integrated library system (ILS) platform incorporating open-source tools and potentially greater customizability than its Millennium ILS. In a departure for III, Sierra will emphasize both local installation and hosted support options.

The initial release is slated for later this year; specifics on pricing have not been announced, but will vary by library size. According to Innovative VP of marketing Gene Shimshock, Sierra has been in the works for some time, with the "critical path" of development launching about a year ago—in the same way that competitors such as Ex Libris and OCLC have ramped up development of next-generation ILS products Alma and Web-scale Management Services, respectively.

More open-minded?
One key element of the new ILS is a seeming concession to sustained calls for more openness, including the incorporation of open-source code and broadened data accessibility via application programming interfaces (APIs). III's Millennium has been criticized as a "black box" for library data because of the difficulty many librarians had running customized operations and extracting data for analysis.

While all Sierra development will be done in-house by III, the project will have open-source elements, such as a PostgreSQL database and an Apache Lucene index, and a set of APIs to allow outside developers to create new applications using Sierra data. A "Developer's Sandbox," an online environment that will provide tools to test applications against Sierra APIs, is also in an early planning stage, Shimshock told LJ.

"Many libraries want control of their system in greater ways and yet don't want to have to be concerned with managing all of the details involved in running a library on a day-to-day basis," Shimshock said.

Local or cloud-based
Sierra also will provide libraries with the option to run Sierra locally or via a "private cloud," differentiating Sierra from locally run Millennium. (As Sandy Hurd, director of strategic markets at III, notes in the comments below, III does offer system and application hosting for individual libraries and consortia.) In this aspect, Sierra will go head-to-head with other high-profile cloud-based library automation products announced by III competitors over the last several months, including OCLC's aforementioned Web-scale Management Services, due to roll out in June, and Ex Libris's Alma.

"There should be no functional differences" between the local or cloud-based versions of Sierra, said Shimshock. "Sierra will be a producer and consumer of web services and this will mean that a library can choose to access local or cloud-based resources without concern that the workflows and applications will continue to work as planned."

Four layers
According to Shimshock, Sierra's design uses a service-oriented architecture with four layers: a Database Layer, using the open-source databases and indexes mentioned above, which will be accessible via management tools and third-party applications such as report writers; a Business Services Layer, which will support circulation, cataloging, patron management, discovery, and workflow functions; and a Presentation Layer and a Client Layer that will support a variety of applications, including desktop and mobile apps.

Millennium's future
Sierra will provide "100% of Millennium functionality," III president Neil Block said in the announcement, "so Millennium libraries will see no loss of functionality when they migrate."

That said, Shimshock told LJ that development and support for libraries that remain using Millennium will "continue for the foreseeable future."

"We will definitely protect the investment that our libraries have made in Millennium and its ancillary products and we will never discount the importance of a vital Millennium system for those libraries that choose to stay with Millennium," he said.

(Update 5/3: This story has been updated to reflect points made in the comments section below.)