Bill Schickling has spent a good chunk of his professional life at what is now Polaris Library Systems, shaping both the older Galaxy system and the newer Polaris integrated library system (ILS). When he joined the company as a programmer in 1987, it was still part of Gaylord, known mostly for its furniture and supplies division. Schickling was principal architect of Polaris. Shortly after Gaylord pulled out in 2003 (and the company became GIS Information Systems), Schickling was named its CEO and president.

Over the years, he and his colleagues have helped move the company from its base in small and mid-sized public libraries to one whose flagship product, Polaris, is in major, multibranch U.S. public libraries, like Miami—Dade County, FL.

Early this year, Schickling took the next step, joining with others in the management group to purchase the company from its owners, the Croydon Company. The investors include Polaris stalwarts Anita Wagner, Dave Bendekovic, and Jim Mieczkowski, along with Jim Carrick, a Syracuse, NY, businessman. "We wanted to guarantee that things stay on the current path for a long time," Schickling said about the venture.

LJ: Some of the biggest Public Library Association (PLA) buzz was on open source ILS's—what's your take on that movement?

BS: Open source seems to be a romantic label. In reality, these are products, like Evergreen and PTFS, available to libraries and often supported by commercial vendors. It's just a different model. So, I think we can peacefully coexist, we'll be just another choice in the marketplace.

One of the positions we've had for the company for a long time is to be independent, to go our own way—against the consolidation that's been going on in the industry. We've always believed that consolidation is a bad thing. We bought the company to protect it against becoming consolidated.

Eliminating choice is bad for libraries. You get people standing up and saying, "I don't have any good choices, I'm going to see if I can do it better myself."

So how will those choices affect industry business practices?

It may change how contracts are written, how pricing is done, much as hosting and Software as a Service [SaaS] are changing those same things. Adding new companies into the mix with new ideas will change the industry. And having libraries intimately involved in the success of the companies might be a good thing, too.

One [possible] challenge is pricing, how libraries do business with commercial ILS's. Libraries are still paying companies support dollars to implement the product they chose—they're paying for services, like data conversion and training.

Libraries engage companies that make software, and that's what we do. We don't have a line item in our annual maintenance called future functionality or customization—that's the way these [open source] companies kind of present themselves, that you'll pay for the customization. Well, our libraries are paying for that, too. As part of their annual maintenance they get support, and they get new functionality. In a lot of cases, our libraries are partnering with us to decide what that functionality is.

What does the management buyout of Polaris mean going forward?

I think it's our combined feeling that we will continue toward some form of employee participation in the profitability of the company. I'm not sure what form that will take, but, certainly, those of us who managed the buyout—we don't do all of the work! It's all the other people here doing the work, and they certainly deserve to participate in the success of the company.

You built the Galaxy ILS. How has that affected your perspective?

I've been knee-deep not only in having to understand technology but in understanding how that technology impacts workflow and overall efficiency within a library, as well as how it translates to the actual ILS product. This makes me better able to communicate openly and directly with our customers as well as our staff. And, ultimately, it gives me a much better understanding of the challenges libraries are facing.

How has the procurement process changed?

Some of the consultants back in the day, when consultants were big in procurement, used to go strictly by the numbers. You had to have 200 customers, you had to be over so much revenue to be a viable company—that seems to have been thrown out the window as consultants are less involved.

Now, most libraries either have an RFP, or know how to get one. I would say that even more are buying without RFPs, using intergovernmental agreements. If someone in their area has gone through the procurement process and looked at the industry, they can use that.

And they're talking to other libraries. One of the first things libraries do when they look at a company is check out its customer profile and ask, "Do I see myself looking back at me? If I do, I'm going to go talk to those people."

Many libraries have decided they don't have to close down under the cone of silence; they can talk to people and get information. But not everywhere. There are still some cities and counties that have procurement policies that require RFPs and have a very controlled environment.

We sold Polaris to [libraries in the Baltimore area], and they've been able to share that information. But then you go one state down to Virginia, and they can only talk to certain people during certain times.

What are the trends you're seeing on the technology side?

The economic situation is no longer "we have to do more with less"; libraries are figuring out that they have to do less with less.

So libraries are asking us and other companies to do their IT and their system administration. I think in a lot of cases that can make economic sense—we can scale it to a level where there's a good return for what they're spending there. I think that will continue, and more libraries will look at that.

It's also cyclical—I don't have a crystal ball; I wish I did!—but it will probably come back [to the library] some day. People will want independence, more access to what their servers are doing, and they may flip back.

What do you see your customers focusing on these days?

One developing trend is for libraries to deliver service without a physical building. As you talk to people, they like what libraries have, they like the content and functionality, but not everyone wants to go to one. Maybe the library delivers materials to an office building, or it has the new Redbox [DVD kiosk]—type thing. You can increase service just by allowing [patrons] to pick up materials at a more convenient place.

Our management system allows people to pick up a book somewhere other than a library. For example, we also added Borrower by Mail for people who aren't going to go to physical buildings. With the advent of mobile devices and the ability to search the PAC from anywhere, users can place a hold and say the pickup location is the box next to the train station, or send it to my house.

And what about on the discovery front?

Polaris has a bit of a different take on discovery—we're trying not to make a separate product but to incorporate the tools that you find in a discovery interface into our OPAC. We see that as a core piece of the management system. We've done some things ourselves, and we've been integrating things like ChiliFresh, LibraryThing, and NoveList Select.

Libraries also are creating their own add-on pieces of software and related functionality. Polaris is trying to be as open as we can to allow that kind of stuff without being open source. It's our model to be as open as we can with full disclosure of what the database looks like and also through our API.

Those APIs have been used pretty successfully in a number of places, like Phoenix Public Library, which was able to replicate its previous OPAC. A library in Alberta had contracted with a company to create an iPhone app, and they were able to use the components of the product they needed through the API. Pierce County Library System, WA, used the API to integrate with Shoutbomb to do text messaging with users. To me, that's a phenomenal use of resources, to go out there and be creative.

Do those discovery plans include databases, journal articles, and that sort of thing?

Yes, we would expect that to be a continuation of the OPAC. Going forward, we see the integration of all the different kinds of media, electronic resources, into everyday use, just like the book. Some people are going to come to the library forever to get a book, and some people are going to come to the library and never get a book. They want the material or the resource in their preferred format, and our management system has to accommodate that. It's what libraries are trying to do—accommodate the information in the format their patrons want.

Does that also mean alliances with aggregators, etc.?

That's our next step, forming relationships with some of those resources, trying to figure out how to move that into Polaris. Polaris has always had a federated search component, but what people thought of as federated search before is not really where things are going, or how people want to search.

Where do you look for trends and inspiration?

We're a Microsoft shop, so we tend to pay attention to what's evolving in Microsoft. We attend conventions like Tech-Ed to look at trends. Obviously, we watch the general technology trends—most of our company is either librarians or programming geeks, so for a lot of them, their hobby is technology.

What's been keeping you busy?

Last year we came up with our Fusion product, which allows our customers to catalog any kind of MIME-compatible format and then have that record searchable in the catalog, so they can mix media right into the OPAC.

We constantly work on customer satisfaction, which led to the creation of a customer relations group last year. It's really sort of quality control on our whole business, to figure out how we're doing, whether we can make the experience better, or improve our processes. We live by customer satisfaction.