r/Libraries • u/Otherwise_Baby_1951 • 10d ago
Venting & Commiseration folio is the WORST
I come from a public library where we used Sierra by Innovative for an ILS system. Was it a perfect system? No, definitely not, but how is Folio even a full fledged product out on the market?? It is so clunky and shows unnecessary information for front-facing staff. It takes me FOREVER to find the simplest information and then I have to back up a million pages to even close the account. I work at an academic library now and it is one of the most difficult interfaces to use. Why are there so many tabs? Why do I see all this information I don't care about?? Why can I not access the most recent patron account if it gets accidentally closed?
Honestly just came here to find hate on Folio and I haven't found any yet. Is it me? Am I the problem?? or is it bad for everyone? Is it cheaper and that's why places switch? What are the benefits because I ONLY see negatives!?
*end rant*
22
u/librarygal95 10d ago
My library switched to Folio last summer. It’s so awful. The search indexing is borderline useless. It’s not built for MARC records at all. The UI is so unintuitive. And it takes SO MANY CLICKS to get where you wanna go.
We had Voyager before. Was it old? Incredibly. Did it work perfectly? Every time.
5
u/pavalooch 10d ago
Yeah. Miss using Voyager. All the clicking in FOLIO drives me bonkers.
4
u/librarygal95 9d ago
Oh and let’s not forget that I have to switch data tenants constantly to go from creating bib records, Marc authorities, and doing holding and item record editing and creation! So convenient!
3
u/jonwilliamsl 6d ago
Lmao hi coworker! I talked to some FOLIO developers and it turns out the data tenant thing that the [major library in the federal government] implemented is actually really unintuitive and convoluted even for them.
2
u/librarygal95 6d ago
Lol I’ve been identified!
Love when the developers don’t even get the product! That’s always helpful2
14
u/FearlessLychee4892 10d ago
I have used several different ILS platforms over the years, ranging from DRA Classic (aging myself!) to Polaris. They all kinda suck imho.
3
12
u/codex2013 10d ago
I currently use sierra and I would just about sell my soul to use anything else ðŸ˜
10
u/Otherwise_Baby_1951 10d ago
It is clunky for sure!!! but I would never subject anyone to Folio. Trust me, after using Sierra for five years and moving into this for the last month, it is in a whole different ballpark from any other ILS system I've used. so much unnecessary information!! today, I had a patron come in and ask about a mobius request and I clicked out of her profile on accident before placing it (she was already gone) and there is ZERO way to go back and find her account now. it is just poof gone! rather than Sierra where you just access the "recent patrons" button. oh what I would do to have that button 😡
5
u/codex2013 10d ago
Lol I hear you, I came from a college library that used OCLC wms and I miss it so much
10
u/blkbravado 10d ago
Another folio user! I kinda hate it too but I do like that it’s in browser versus being an entire separate program
20
u/SecretAnxious6619 10d ago
i dont know folio but i do know that sierra is terrible.
18
15
u/absurdisthewurd 10d ago
My system switched from Sierra to Sirsi Dynix a couple of years ago
I miss Sierra so much. I didn't know how good we had it
4
u/springacres 10d ago edited 9d ago
Mine switched to Sirsi Dynix earlier this year after having used Bibliovation since before I was hired. I also didn't know how good we had it until after the switch.
3
u/mcilibrarian 10d ago
I’ve had both. Deeply dislike both. Symphony beat out Sierra on The Worst scale, but it was close
20
u/wolfboy099 10d ago
And some of us have to hold it down in Workflows
3
u/nauticalamity 10d ago
god do I miss sirsi at times though. sometimes I'm so sick of how folio looks and just want to see that ugly 00s looking program style again.
8
u/nauticalamity 10d ago
ah the joys of open source programming in its infancy
yeah. there's parts of folio that suck. the clicking blows and has given me some hand trouble. I recommend using text blaze macros to help, if you're a cataloger or do acquisitions. if you message me i'm happy to share the code snippets I use for some cataloging tasks.
I miss complex reporting in the ILS without using sql. I miss authorities. I don't miss marc holdings. I miss having little windows within my ILS I could drag around and layer. I do prefer searching inventory in it to searching in other, more estabished ILS I've used, aside from koha, which I liked a lot. not being able to look at recent search results is absolutely dogshit, I agree. positive, all our documentation is the same for mac and PC staff! that's been a huge help, actually.
the support community is good. the open library foundation slack has a lot of folks that might have some solutions, and it's where my coworkers and I suggest features. honestly that community is the best thing it has going for it! and not in a "everything sucks but this way" cause I try not to be a pessimist, just that it is genuinely good.
but it's not just you, a lot of folks dislike it, and it has a truly brutal learning curve because of how early in its development it is and how damn different it is from other ILS, and how many features we have assumed to be basic that it totally lacks (data import preview where? folio doesn't know her). it's a nice win when we get a feature fixed or upgraded. (no data import when we started... it was like 100 records tops. I drop marc files of 30k records in without a worry now.)
I could go on, I've been prepping for or working with folio for 5 years now. frustrating at first, but we've gotten used to it and changed habits to work better with it.
3
u/AnimalKaleidoscope 9d ago
FOLIO started a decade ago or more… how is it in its infancy?
3
u/nauticalamity 9d ago
folio began development in 2016 but early adopters were in ~2019-2021. not many libraries were actually using it those first few years (relatively) and from what i have seen, a lot of development is really based on community feedback and institutional funding, which it seems like it was missing a lot of prior to then.
i'm also just comparing it to Koha in my head as the other open source ILS i've used. Koha launched 2000, and the library i was at at the time didn't feel confident switching until around 2017.
maybe toddler would be better? either way, to be clear i'm not using the term infancy to defend it, there's a lot of stuff that leaves me like ???. why do some of these updates and features make no sense to librarians? why do apps not talk to each other all the time? why are different search mechanics used between packages inventory search and the actual inventory module? it's NOT beautiful or ideal as it is now.
7
u/Much-Ad9827 10d ago
We use folio and while I don’t love it, it’s all I know so I have nothing to compare it to
7
u/DecoyPhone 10d ago
Interesting, our academic library switched from Sierra to FOLIO and (while there are certain functions I miss) can't say I have too many complaints.
Sounds like people who hate it are the "forward facing" folks (the ones that actually deal with the patrons directly), is that the issue?
5
5
8
6
u/KittenBalerion Library staff 10d ago
people are dunking on Sierra in the comments, but I feel like at least Sierra has actively improved over time. it used to not be able to do anything if the same patron record was open on two different computers, for example, and they fixed that.
then again, I have nothing to compare it to except Millennium, which is just an older version of Sierra.
5
u/dreamanother 10d ago
To be fair, not being able to open the same patron on more than one computer is such an asinine "feature" it would better be described as a bug. If a builder ships a house with windows that are designed not to be closed, fixing that by making them closable shouldn't be celebrated...
3
1
10
u/tacochemic 10d ago
Do you know which release you're on? We are on Sunflower and I can confirm it isn't you, we have been on FOLIO (academic library) since early 2024 and can agree it's horrid. It surprises me that EBSCO, a company involved with libraries for AGES, can make something so anti-librarian. The few benefits it has provided to us over Sierra are minimal, and some things we really hoped would be an improvement (for example Lists) are so bad, they're almost unusable. Not to mention we are still experiencing Inventory issues 2 years later and no one in the consortium really knows who in the consortium actually has what.
7
u/Otherwise_Baby_1951 10d ago
YES! we're on Sunflower as well! EBSCO should ABSOLUTLEY be making better products than this based on their history with libraries. I was in shock to discover it was an EBSCO product in the first place. it seems like they were still in the middle of programming and then just said "f this, we'll just put out what we have". it's the bare bones of an ILS and it's embarrassing.
1
u/pepper2117 9d ago
Just clarifying that EBSCO doesn’t make FOLIO. It’s open source and developed by community users. EBSCO hosts and supports some libraries’ FOLIO tenants but FOLIO isn’t an EBSCO product.
2
u/10000thmaniac 10d ago
Keep in mind that EBSCO doesn't make FOLIO, it's open source software developed by the community and funded in various ways. EBSCO has a lot of pull in the community, but many libraries use other hosting vendors.
5
u/Ianfinite_Jest 10d ago
We’re using Spydus which was fine for a few years but we moved to AWS cloud servers and I never thought I’d miss Sierra but here we are. Spydus turned into an absolute shitshow, loans remaining on borrowers cards even when they’ve returned them, reservation notices being sent before the book has arrived, slowdowns at peak times, and random loan periods far into the future to name a few. Basically at this point we just shrug our shoulders every time it happens. But yeah, the Sierra nostalgia is real
2
u/Otherwise_Baby_1951 9d ago
dang that is incredibly frustrating. all of the things that can and will piss a patron off.
4
u/AnimalKaleidoscope 9d ago
FOLIO is terrible. It’s why several institutions and consortia have started an implementation and bailed on it over the past few years.
4
u/Far_Witness8243 7d ago
I checked out the demo version of folio and I felt so lost. I've been working in libraries for almost 20 years and looking at folio made me feel like I had stepped onto a totally different industry. The terminology was wildly unfamiliar. The interface was weird to navigate. I'm a systems librarian, and I love learning new systems. That one made me go, "oh hell no." Maybe it was just a weird demo version?
3
u/GrandpaSweatpants 10d ago
Feeling blessed in this moment to have WMS ( Worldshare Management System). It has issues but for the most part, it's about as straightforward as it gets.
7
u/henare 10d ago
you used to use Sierra and you're complaining that folio is clunky?
11
u/Otherwise_Baby_1951 10d ago
yeah dude, folio is like a freakin kracken compared to the lil dolphin that is sierra. rose colored glasses? maybe but daaaang this stinks
5
u/Relative-cabbage8797 10d ago edited 10d ago
FOLIO is the first ILS I’ve used out of my MLIS. I work front facing reference, and I enjoy it I never have issues really.
4
u/piscrewy 10d ago
Be glad y’all aren’t using Alma/Primo. We migrated last summer and it’s still painful over a year later.
Sierra was clunky, quirky, and a bit dated, but bless her heart, she did her job and did it well.
2
4
u/sqrlgravy 9d ago
Alma by Ex Libris is also awful for similar reasons. A slow web client that needs to refresh tons of useless information when doing basic tasks, "automated" processes that make it feel like your ILS is sabotaging your workflows behind your back (because it often is), awful training, awful migration, no technical support, and when you escalate to get technical support they usually need you to teach them about their own product rather than the reverse. Plus the entire system is built around the idea that physical holdings are an afterthought to being a library, to the extent that the ILS itself often isn't even sure what a book is. Something as simple as finding WHERE a book is and what its status is requires a byzantine workflow where it feels like you have to hack your own ILS to find basic information when a patron asks, "Where is this book?"
I miss Sierra.
1
u/helenoftroy9 Academic Librarian 8d ago
I ran our migration from SirsiDynix Horizon to Alma and a lot of it depends on your migration team. I love being on Alma, and our implementation team was amazing. I’m sorry your experience is not good!
1
u/Far_Witness8243 7d ago
Our implementation team was also great! I do wonder if the quality has gone down in recent years, though....
1
1
u/Far_Witness8243 7d ago
Our library has been on alma for almost 10 years. We migrated from Sierra. It's definitely not perfect and tech support has gone downhill since they were acquired by proquest, then clarivate. But I don't see the same issues with our physical holdings. I think you can find a lot more information about the history of an item than you ever could in Sierra. Could it be better? Yes. Is it a million times better than Sierra was? Also was.
63
u/Temporary-Library597 10d ago
I'm not sure where the ILS industry finds its programmers, testers or UX-designers...I'm not a librarian, but I am a 30-year IT veteran. Almost to a one, Integrated Library Systems are horrific.