Tour Polaris on Your Own

Pierce County Library System has made creative use of the Custom Content area on their initial welcome page.  There are selectable tiles for popular functions like reserving a computer and making a purchase request.

Finger Lakes Library System is a consortium of five county library systems in upstate New York. Its a classic example of independent libraries sharing a single instance of Polaris.

Pinnacle is a great example of a single Polaris implementation whose individual libraries have done unique PowerPAC customizations.  If you tour their site and switch among the locations you’ll notice each library’s PowerPAC is very unique even though they share a single instance of Polaris.

The Johnston Catalog is extraordinary and perhaps the best example of library staff using the Polaris API’s and open architecture to build their own public interface.

Denver Public Library has done one of the finest jobs of “skinning” their PowerPAC which we’ve seen.  Both their website and PowerPAC have the same very attractive visual styling. 

DPL has long been one of our favorite examples of a library who has created a consistent and attractive look and feel for both their website and PowerPAC.

The MDPLS PowerPAC features a custom header and footer consistent with the overall library web presence.  The menu navigation in PowerPAC includes a very clever interactive search prompt built right into the header so the option to start a different search is always available to the user.

As a multi-site system, Bridges has done a very nice job of personalizing the PowerPAC for the individual member libraries.  If you visit their PowerPAC, be sure and switch between a few of the library locations.  Notice how nicely each library site has been customized.

Mid-Columbia Libraries has done an extraordinary amount of customization to their PowerPAC.  In addition, MCL has used the Polaris API to provide extensive discovery features right on their Drupal home page.  This site is an excellent example of how far you can go with your customizations and/or custom API implementations.

SCCCPL migrated to Polaris from a library system they created on their own called Listen2000.