We are currently in the process of migrating to Polaris from Sierra, and I’m wondering if any of you have fantastic training ideas that you used in your library or libraries to train staff collectively. I have ideas, and we have a closure day in October that we’ll use part of for this purpose, but if you have fun training that you did, especially if you moved to Polaris from Sierra, I’d love to chat with you!
Thanks!
Traci
Hi! We migrated from SirsiDynix to Polaris in October of 2024. We started out with grand ideas - closing for a day long training, but in the end we developed a workbook with series on training videos and activities that staff complete. Then they come for a 4 hour in person “training lab” where they go deep on the data to day circ, etc. We had just gotten Niche Academy, so we used that to do the training. This then became our ongoing model for training staff. Now, when they do the lab monthly for new staff, we meet to discuss issues we are seeing and ways to improve on the training. It’s working pretty well!
One thing that I wish we had know about was this amazing resource: Online Courses | Cooperative Computer Services (Found out about it in one of the IUG zoom meetings which i highly recommend).
Good luck with your migration!
You can also find downloadable and editable guides here: Patron Services - Polaris - support.iii.com at Innovative Interfaces
We also have a list of common confusion points listed here.
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We migrated from Sierra to Polaris, and our go-live date was May 7. Our migration package included live virtual training and access to the recordings. We also strongly encouraged our staff to explore the Polaris LibGuides (short videos, Word and PDF files) to familiarize themselves with the Polaris procedures and vocabulary (picklist, not hold slips).
I attended the 2024 IUG Conference in Detroit and saw the presentation about Allen County Libraries’ (Indiana) a fast migration and how they leveraged SharePoint as a consistent place to check for information, including announcements (which they also emailed to all staff).
I was approved by our director and implementation team to create and maintain our Polaris Portal in SharePoint (I oversee our SharePoint).
Preparing for launch, the Polaris Portal became a primary access point for live and on-demand training links, documentation, training server, timeline of milestones and an archive of news articles (emailed).
As we moved through the migration phases, we kept our staff experience in mind, adapting the Polaris Portal to keep the news and most necessary information at the top for easy access.
The Polaris Portal remains a key access point for current and new staff to access links to training, documentation, Polaris Leap, reports and regular news.
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