Thrive on Thursday

Many library staff aren’t used to working remotely or in a building without the public visiting.  PaILS is keeping the online meeting room open as much as possible for remote worker support and as a gathering place if SPARK Libraries want to chat, walk through a workflow, or ask questions about our shared hosted software and its settings or capabilities. Thrive on Thursday: Explore Evergreen features, settings, and the roadmap … Read More

Emergency Closing Features

Per Office of Commonwealth Libraries, advice was to close libraries for routine, in-person public library services until March 29, 2020. SPARK is working to implement this via our shared open source ILS to assist all members and will work toward this plan: Extend all due dates on items currently in circulation to April 7.   We can reassess this date at any time.  To accomplish this, PaILS staff will use … Read More

2019 Reports

2019 was an active year for PaILS members.  Check out this list of top circulating collection titles from the combined SPARK libraries using Evergreen catalog in 2019. Did your favorite title or author make the list? Note: This list excludes circulation counts for things like the bathroom key or public computers that some libraries track use of using records and items.   Data accessed via the Reports Module of Evergreen … Read More

Support and Ticketing Site Address Changing Soon

Be prepared, PaILS staff are in the process of moving our current support site and Help Desk software from http://support.sparkpa to an upgraded hosted server at HelpSpot.  The URL/address of the site will change to https://sparkpa.helpspot.com/ Please update your bookmarks and links to the site effective late evening July 18, or start of business July 19. There will be an hour or two when the site is not accessible, after … Read More

Contacting Support and Queue Management Strategy

The SPARK Support portal is full of questions and ideas for implementing the most effective workflows and policies right now. We are also planning for the upgrade to 3.3. Please continue to be patient as we work through a long list. If you have an open request that you believe needs immediate attention, please call directly and we’ll set a priority timeline together. If something is stopping your success, PaILS … Read More

Plan Ahead for Offline Circulation

PaILS Director of Technology and System Support, Lugene Shelly will offer a live online training about Offline Circulation on Friday, June 7 at 11a.m. Be prepared so that you and your staff are ready to respond if your Internet connection goes down or the SPARK hosted Evergreen application experiences a downtime. Attend this session for a refresher of using Offline Circulation. You could prepare by reading Evergreen documentation or SPARK … Read More

Want to Try a New Module?

Did you or your staff attend the Evergreen Conference 2019 at the end of April and come home brimming with energy and inspiration to try something new? Perhaps your library is now excited about using Acquisitions or Booking or even Serials. SPARK support is here to help. If you are thinking of trying a new module that your location hasn’t used before, please contact us to start the conversation and … Read More

SPARK Support LIVE!

Attend an open office hours LIVE work session with PaILS’s Director of Technology and System Support, Lugene. Tuesday, April 16 from 2p.m. to 4p.m. Thursday, April 18 from 10a.m. to noon Don’t worry if you miss this week, in future weeks, we’ll have different hours to serve library staff who work varying hours around the Commonwealth. Format: This is a trial for a new way to offer immediate support. We’ll … Read More