The U of T’s new library catalogue still needs some fine-tuning, but the director of information technology services at Robarts Library said that overall, the switch went smoothly.

“Considering the time that we started and the time we went live, about eight months, I think it went outstandingly well,” said Marshall Clinton.

The university’s old computer catalogue system was more than 10 years old, and software support was no longer available for it. The new software system, called Unicorn, is a product of the Sirsi Corporation.

Clinton said that the response to the new system, by librarians and general users alike, has been mostly good.

“People have had mixed reactions,” Clinton said. “Some [were] really positive about the new system, others want it to work just like the old system. In any changeover, things never go quite as well as we’d like them to.”

Some features of the new system are running behind schedule. For instance, the system that manages acquisitions is not yet complete, and the entry of new periodicals into the database has been a problem.

About 17,000 records were left off the system for a week over the summer, but Clinton denied that any records had been lost in the shuffle.

A spokesperson for the Sirsi Corporation said library systems as large as U of T’s often experience growing pains, but such problems were temporary.

“There are always issues of some sort or another,” said Stephanie Westbrook, a customer service manager at the Sirsi offices in Huntsville, Alabama. “You need to be careful and you need to have some checks and balances along the way. As far as I know there were no problems with U of T’s migration.

“Of course, we’re committed to making sure U of T is happy with the system.”

Elsie del Bianco, head of public services at the Graham Library at Trinity College, seemed happy with the system. “If you compare it with the old catalogue, it is miles above everything we’ve had before,” said Del Bianco.

Training staff on the new system was a problem this September.

“There was a learning curve problem. New students were being hired at circulation desks, people weren’t yet trained…after all, people had been running the old system for 10 years,” Clinton said.

Del Bianco wasn’t daunted by the catalogue change. “Your mindset has to change with it,” she said.

“And there are certainly some new features which are very good.”