Atlas Systems will be exhibiting Ares and Aeon in Booth 2206 ~ stop by and check out Ares 4 and Aeon 3.2 and talk to our Library and Training Solutions representatives about ILLiad Tune-ups and the new Video Training Library!

Exhibition Hours ~ Booth 2206

• Friday, June 22, 2012 – 5:30-7:30pm (Grand Opening Reception)
• Saturday and Sunday, June 23-24 – 9:00am – 5:00 pm
• Monday, June 25 – 9:00am – 2:00pm

We look forward to working with them to meet all of their electronic and physical reserve challenges!

VIRGINIA BEACH, VA – April 2, 2012 – A capacity crowd convened in Virginia Beach for the 12th Annual International ILLiad Conference, this year celebrating the 15-year anniversary of the launch of the ILLiad resource sharing management software. Atlas Systems, the leading provider of time-saving solutions for libraries, hosted the conference that drew more than 350 attendees.

Pre-conference workshops covered GIST (Getting It System Toolkit) planning and implementation, tips for ILL administrators, and the benefits of “tuning up” ILLiad for enhanced productivity through workflow changes. Conference sessions addressed a full range of topics from lending media, to pay-per-view options, cloud-based delivery, e-book resource sharing and much more. Attendees were eager to share their thoughts throughout the two-day conference by tweeting at #ILLiad12.

Jay Jordan, OCLC president and CEO, gave a thought provoking and motivational keynote address, “Evolution: How fast is fast enough.” OCLC is the exclusive distributor of ILLiad and also helps sponsor the conference.

“ILLiad users are very generous in sharing what they’ve learned with their colleagues, which creates a high-level of energy throughout the conference every year,” said Jason Glover, Atlas president and CEO. “Many of our users return every year—they know that the investment they make in attending the conference will pay dividends all year long. But we’re also seeing a new trend of users attending their first ILLiad conference. This year one-third of the attendees were first timers.”

The 2012 Conference sessions will be archived at http://www.atlas-sys.com/conference/conference-sessions/. To read the Twitter string go to #ILLiad12.

The dates for the next ILLiad Conference will be March 20-22, 2013.

About Atlas Systems
For more than fifteen years, Atlas Systems has been exclusively dedicated to developing software, training and consulting solutions that enable libraries to transform their user services and maximize workflow efficiency. Atlas is best known for creating the ILLiad interlibrary loan management system now distributed exclusively by OCLC and used by more than 1,100 libraries worldwide. Focused on bringing the benefits of automation to library processes that have not been addressed by other software services, Atlas has introduced Ares, an electronic reserves solution, and Aeon, an online request and workflow management system specifically designed for special collections libraries and archives. For more information, visit www.atlas-sys.com.

The award, which is generously sponsored by Atlas Systems and RUSA’s Sharing and Transforming Access to Resources Section (STARS), provides $1,250 in travel funds to a library practitioner who is new to the field of interlibrary loan/document delivery or electronic reserves, and who has daily, hands-on involvement in the areas of borrowing, lending, document delivery, electronic reserves, material delivery or resource sharing.

“The committee was blessed with the problem of many worthy nominees and we selected Natalie because her petition demonstrated a commitment to improving her library’s services to both internal and external users and an eagerness to make a difference at her organization,” said Collette Mak, award committee chair. “Natalie identified several specific goals that she could implement more quickly with a mentor, and her energy and enthusiasm showed clearly through her essay.”

Beam, who has a MLIS from San Jose State University, will receive her award, a $1,250 cash prize, at the RUSA Awards Reception, scheduled for 5 – 6:30 p.m. Sunday, June 24 as a part of RUSA’s events at the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim. The exact location of this event will be announced in late spring. For more information, visit RUSA’s website or the Annual Conference website.

The Reference and User Services Association, a division of the American Library Association, represents librarians and library staff in the fields of reference, specialized reference, collection development, readers’ advisory and resource sharing. RUSA is the foremost organization of reference and information professionals who make the connections between people and the information sources, services, and collection materials they need. Learn more about the association at www.ala.org/rusa.

Along with the #ILLiad12 Twitter feed you’ll find a display of the conference schedule including session lists and indicators to show your sessions as well as sessions that have reached capacity. There is also an info page with general conference information including bus/trolley schedules and links to local dining options.

Have the iPhone or iPad? Download the #ILLiad12 Conference universal app for iOS! http://bit.ly/zN01kY

Have an Android device? Download the #ILLiad12 Conference app from Google: http://bit.ly/yefYIP or Amazon: http://amzn.to/wbfeTH

During the weekend of February 25-26, 2012, Dustin Stokes, Atlas Senior Software Developer, and Travis Stokes, Atlas Software Developer, participated in GiveCamp in Richmond, VA to help a local charity solve a serious data management challenge. GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where technology professionals from designers, developers and database administrators to marketers and web strategists donate their time to provide solutions for non-profit organizations. Since its inception in 2007, the GiveCamp program has provided benefits to hundreds of charities, worth millions of dollars of developer and designer time in services.

Travis and Dustin were assigned to Homeward, the planning and coordinating organization for homeless services in the greater Richmond region. Homeward needed a custom CRM system to meet multiple needs: organize donor and volunteer data; manage fundraising events and campaigns; and track their grant acquisition process. According to Dustin, Homeward was using an Access database to track donor information. Volunteers were tracked in Excel spreadsheets with a separate spreadsheet generated for each event by a 3rd party volunteer registration system. Fundraising event and fundraising campaign details were being managed without any specific software solution at all.

In roughly two days, a team of four was able to build Homeward a full-featured CRM system to accomplish everything they asked for and more. The new system provides communication tracking, task and deadline management, electronic document management, and record change tracking. The team was able to import all of Homeward’s existing data and developed a custom application to facilitate the import of Excel spreadsheets generated for future events by their 3rd party solution. The most important feature the new system provides is the ability to run custom reports across the entirety of the data collected by their organization rather than just reporting about the disparate segments of data as they were doing before.

“This was an amazing experience for Travis and me,” said Dustin. “It was really rewarding to give Homeward the tools they need to better manage and track their donations, fundraising and volunteer hours. The experience also gave us the opportunity to enhance our software development knowledge by building the CRM on the salesforce.com platform, which was a new-to-us tool.”

Travis added, “We really appreciate Atlas covering our expenses for the weekend so that we could participate in this charity event. It gave us a great opportunity to introduce our company to new people and expand our visibility in our own backyard.”

Atlas Systems maintains a dynamic outreach program that encompasses volunteerism, corporate giving and cause marketing. Both the company and its employees actively strive to make a positive impact in our industry, our communities and our world.

Although you may not be able to attend this year’s conference, we will be posting the slides for all regular conference sessions on our website so you can review the information for sessions of interest.

If you were shut out of this year’s ILLiad Conference, mark your calendar now for the 2013 conference. The conference will take place in Virginia Beach, March 20-22, 2013. Registration will open in January. Register early to secure a place!

We’ll miss you this year and look forward to seeing you in 2013.

Melanie comes to us with 8 years of customer service, retail, and administrative experience. Originally from Maryland, she moved to Virginia Beach a little over 2 years ago.

Welcome, Melanie!

Kerry joins our other talented agents that support Ares, Aeon and ILLiad, which is exciting on two levels. One of our Customer Service Agents, Shawn Styer, will be moving over to a new position in Training and Library Solutions over the next several months. Shawn will be able to do a lot of our technical custom services for users as well as training. As Shawn preps for this new position, we are able to hire Kerry to work with him and join the customer service team in his place. If you are a site who works primarily with Shawn, you’ll still be contacting him until Kerry is up to speed and we gradually transition her into that role. It’s a wonderful opportunity for us to add Kerry to our team, while still keeping Shawn’s talents in another area of Atlas.

Kerry holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from SUNY Stony Brook, a Master of Library and Information Studies from Queens College and will finish her Master of Professional Studies from SUNY Stony Brook this summer. She has experience running the Access Services department as well as supervising five professional FTEs and 20 students.

We are happy to have her as our newest team member! Feel free to contact her at kkeegan@atlas-sys.com to congratulate her.