This week was partner week in Emerging Technologies class, and I had the pleasure of working with fellow BPS educator, Michele Lavorgna. She is an English teacher at Brighton High School, another BPS school, so she uses the same library system that I do.
Michele was not familiar with the integrated library system of Polaris, which I have had to learn this year as a librarian. The assignment was for her to interview me about the systems that I work with, but it made more sense for us to just have a conversation about our experience in Boston Public high school libraries.
We only know what we know , so I am not sure how common it is for public high school libraries to be as connected with the public library system as we are in Boston. Our libraries are like mini satellites of the main library. Our search engine connects to the main library and our students can request books to be sent to our library from any branch. The books in our library belong to the Boston Public Schools, but they are cataloged along with other BPL books and we have to follow the same rules as any other Boston Public librarian when we enter books into the catalog or make a library card.
Rather than arguing for a new system or pretending that someone was going to try to change our system, we decided to argue for even greater integration between the Boston Public library and the Boston Public Schools.
The Boston Public library uses Polaris for its Integrated Library System (ILS) and BiblioCommons as its patron facing OPAC. Boston Public Schools libraries which are connected to the Boston Public library only have access to Polaris so the search functions are very basic and not intuitive. I don’t think it should cost much money for the Boston Public library to give each Boston Public school library its own page on the website. I am pretty sure it is just a flick of a switch for our schools to be listed under the availability filter. Earlier in the school year our schools were listed when you clicked “Availability by Location”, but you could see that the books could not be circulated from the school libraries to the public branches. Somehow, that got changed in the last couple of months, but it shouldn’t be hard to change it back.
If every Boston Public school library had a homepage on the BPL site, not only would it be easier to use, but I think it would also drive more students to participate in local library activities. The Boston Public library is already so generous and collegial with us school librarians. They are wonderful partners just like Michele! I think it would be a great way for the city to support the schools if our libraries were truly integrated.
Library at BINcA 
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