Stephen Elfstrand, PALS Executive Director and a saxophonist on the side, will jam with fellow musical librarians the evening of March 31, 2011, during the 2011 Association of College & Research Libraries Conference in Philadelphia.

For more information, see the MnPALS Staff Blog post: PALS Director jams at ACRL.

MnPALS Plus, VuFind, Discovery, Open Source

Todd Digby, MnSCU System Director for Libraries, and Stephen Elfstrand, PALS Executive Director, have recently published an article on MnPALS Plus published in Computers in Libraries.

The article "DISCOVERING OPEN SOURCE DISCOVERY: Using VuFind to Create MnPALS Plus" explains that PALS staff members scanned the open source environment to see what was available that could provide a feasible discovery solution for our libraries. Since PALS already had experienced, highly capable programmers and systems staff, the open source option was an approach that we could comfortably take using existing resources. VuFind was modified in several important ways for use in a large Aleph consortium.

Start making plans to attend this spring’s MnPALS Consortium Workdays!

Reference and Instruction: April 4, 2011
Systems: April 13, 2011
Circulation and Interlibrary Loan: April 15, 2011
Acquisitions/Serials/Cataloging: April 28, 2011

Watch the website and mailing lists for more information. We look forward to seeing you at these upcoming events.

On February 17, 2011 the PALS website went live with a new look and feel.  The new site allows one login to access the PALS Forum, Wiki, documentation and client downloads.  A separate login will still be required to log a support incident, but we hope to integrate this into the single sign-in in the future.  If you are a current PALS Customer, use your current Forum login or registered email address and password to access the Forum, Wiki, documentation, and client downloads.  Your Support Center login remains unchanged. 

Forgotten your PALS Forum ID/Password? You can reset your password.

While the content of the site remains the same, the organization has been modified slightly.  Please take some time to familiarize yourself with the various menu options.  To get you started, a few key features of the new site include:

Aleph version 20 is up and running.

To use Aleph version 20, this step MUST be done first.  In the Aleph version 20 AlephADM client, change the server address in Libraries Configuration to aleph.mnpals.net:<port#>.  This needs to be done on each workstation.  See Support Center answer #3238, which has been upated for version 20.

The "Go Live" document provides additional information in the section titled "What to do in each module AFTER the upgrade to version 20 is live."

More information about Aleph version 20 can be found here.

If you experience connection problems, please call (507)389-2000.

If you have questions about functionality in version 20, please enter these via the support desk: https://pals.custhelp.com.

The upgrade to Aleph version 20 is nearly complete. If all goes as planned, we expect to have version 20 live in production by late in the day on Saturday, January 29, 2011. Watch for an announcement on January 29 indicating that the upgrade is complete.

Please Note: