PALS is a program of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities. Initiated at Mankato State University in 1978, the name PALS was originally an acronym for Project for Automated Library Systems and was a Minnesota State University System undertaking.

Consortium of MnPALS Libraries

PALS now serves all of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities. Services are also provided on a contract basis to private college and university libraries, state government libraries, public libraries, school libraries, and special libraries.

PALS operates and supports the Aleph automated library system from Ex Libris. The software runs on servers at the central office site in Mankato.

PALS Evergreen

East Central Regional Library became the first Minnesota public library system to migrate to an open source integrated library system using the Evergreen software. The migration was also a first for the PALS office, which hosts East Central Regional Library’s Evergreen-based catalog.

RightNow Support Center (MnSCU)

Online learning specialists in the PALS office provide support and training for the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities RightNow Support Center. Services are provided through an enterprise-wide contract with RightNow Technologies.

MnLINK Gateway Services

The MnPALS system is one of the server sites on the MnLINK Gateway, providing access to the libraries’ collections for all citizens of the state of Minnesota. The Gateway is a federated search and ILL system, running ZPortal and VDX from OCLC PICA (formerly Fretwell Downing). The MnPALS libraries use ZPortal to search other servers in the state and the ELM databases, but rather than using VDX for ILL, they use the ILL module in MnPALS.

PALS provides support to the Consortium of MnPALS libraries in their use of the MnLINK Gateway.
Search the MnLINK Gateway