Making the Most of Your ILS

Book excerpt: Systems administrators, librarians, and library staff will learn key principles and methods for securing their ILS and understand how to configure and optimize their library catalog by improving data management practices, streamlining existing workflows, and documenting their system's configuration. The integrated library system (ILS) plays a central role in every library's operations, but is your ILS optimized to ensure maximum productivity? Are you taking advantage of the features added since you implemented it? Walking readers through a wide-ranging ILS review, this book will help you ensure systems are properly configured, produce better documentation, and evaluate staff workflows. The authors-a director of collections and content and a director of user experience-created a comprehensive plan for reviewing an ILS, starting with planning the project and deciding whom to include. They discuss basic ILS security principles, including keeping patron data safe and the importance of reviewing staff permissions. After the basics, the authors go in-depth on reviewing codes and figuring out how different parts of an ILS work together as well as how to review those areas, and they offer ideas on how to stay up-to-date with your ILS, such as where to look for information on issues, updates, and new features. Several methods for analyzing and documenting workflows are also discussed.