Just saw the SIRSI RSS thing that Jenny Levine posted. Very cool on first glance! I hope it ends up to be what SIRSI is claiming it will be. If so, that’ll be one awesome product.
But for me, there are some questions I’ll need to answer to become completely satisfied with the product. Mainly, because the way I’m reading SIRSI’s PDF, to use the RSS feed part, you have to purchase SIRSI Rooms (a separate product from the Unicorn ILS system my library has).
So the first question is this: will you be able to use the RSS feeds mentioned without purchasing the separate SIRSI Rooms product?
Also, it sounds like the newest version of SIRSI Rooms is really trying to become a Content Management System (CMS), which is cool… unless your library system already has one in place. Then it’s not so cool – who wants to operate two CMS’s? That sorta defeats the purpose of content management, doesn’t it?
So my second question is this: how well wil it integrate with my present website? Can I hook up parts and pieces of the SIRSI product with my website as needed?
Or maybe I’m off my rocker, and still trying to do it the hard way (build it yourself, rather than piggybacking off someone else’s hard work)? Not sure.
Of course, first things first. I want to see some more info, and I want a DEMO!
lislemck says
Congratulations on reading Sirsi’s pdf at all; definitely not created for web viewing. I attended the Sirsi presentation at ALA Midwinter, and then went to the booth for a demo. I believe that it is the EPS (Enterprise Portal System) that allows RSS for searches, rather than Rooms. But they were very entwined, so I can’t say definitely. From what the rep said, Unicorn is “plain vanilla”, i.e., none of those features. I hope that’s not the case. We’re moving to Unicorn from DRA Classic this summer, but I do not think we are going to pay for the whole shebang. We have a pretty large investment in our website. It sounded like EPS and Rooms was geared for libraries who do not. But let’s keep hope alive.
lislemck says
Congratulations on reading Sirsi's pdf at all; definitely not created for web viewing. I attended the Sirsi presentation at ALA Midwinter, and then went to the booth for a demo. I believe that it is the EPS (Enterprise Portal System) that allows RSS for searches, rather than Rooms. But they were very entwined, so I can't say definitely. From what the rep said, Unicorn is “plain vanilla”, i.e., none of those features. I hope that's not the case. We're moving to Unicorn from DRA Classic this summer, but I do not think we are going to pay for the whole shebang. We have a pretty large investment in our website. It sounded like EPS and Rooms was geared for libraries who do not. But let's keep hope alive.