Staff who have been involved in planning for the migration to a new ILS for the last couple of years, or who have just been interested observers, will remember the term iBistro as the name for Sirsi's Web catalog interface. Many of us have been impressed with the enhanced features and content available in iBistro, with book jacket art, synopses, and reviews provided for many titles. As more recent communications have referred to the Web catalog interface for the new ILS as the Enterprise Portal Solution, or EPS, some of you may be wondering what the difference is, or what has become of iBistro.IBistro (or, as it is implemented in acdemic libraries, iLink) is a web catalog interface that functions well as a stand-alone resource that is part of a library web site. SirsiDynix continues to sell iBistro but is no longer actively developing it. In 2005 the company introduced its new public interface, the Enterprise Portal Solution, which was intended to integrate the catalog with a library's other online resources to become a single public interface for a library's web site.
While it is possible to implement EPS as a stand-alone catalog interface, it has been designed to work in conjunction with other SirsiDynix products such as Rooms and SingleSearch to function as a portal to all of a library's web resources. However, the enhanced content and other features that staff have appreciated in iBistro implementations such as those listed in the Sirsi Unicorn OPAC examples post will be part of EPS as well.Next: What is a "portal," anyway?
Images courtesy of SirsiDynix.
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