# Polaris ILS Reviews **Vendor:** Innovative, a ProQuest Company **Category:** [Library Management Systems](https://www.g2.com/categories/library-management-systems) **Average Rating:** 3.5/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 14 ## About Polaris ILS The Polaris ILS is designed to provide a scalable software solution with powerful staff tools and an intuitive experience for patrons. ## Polaris ILS Reviews ### 1. In the world of ILS, Polaris is just fine. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 01, 2024 **What do you like best about Polaris ILS?** Polaris is the ILS I have the most experience with and can say that the search options are varied and powerful, but not always intuitive. The functionality from a cataloger prospective and from front line workers are great. The reports feature does a wonderful job of keeping my organized and able to make batch changes. **What do you dislike about Polaris ILS?** It's sometimes just not functional. It can not always make sense. Some of the things that it likes is odd. Additionally, it needs integration with realia reservations. **What problems is Polaris ILS solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps keep our collection organized, available to the public, and allows us to plan for future collection development. ### 2. Easy to use ILS System **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Stacey S. | YA/Programming Librarian, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 11, 2019 **What do you like best about Polaris ILS?** I have used it in two library systems so far and it's easy to use. Makes cataloging very easy. **What do you dislike about Polaris ILS?** I miss SirsiDynix I guess where you can do more things with just a library card number. **What problems is Polaris ILS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Check out books, catalog, etc. ### 3. Easy to Use, Simply to Learn **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Caroline M. | Administrative Assistant, Government Administration, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 29, 2019 **What do you like best about Polaris ILS?** Polaris was simple to learn when I was just starting in the Circulation Department at the library. It's interface is fairly user-friendly while still having a lot of functions. **What do you dislike about Polaris ILS?** When you make a mistake in Polaris, correcting it can sometimes be difficult. Often that is not a big deal, but sometimes you can make a mistake in a patron's account and cause problems. Also, there is are a few parts of Polaris that we do not use, so maybe an option to hide certain fields so as not to mistakenly fill them, or hide buttons so as not to mistakenly press them - we know what they do, but do not want to use their features. **What problems is Polaris ILS solving and how is that benefiting you?** All Circulation procedures are easier with Polaris ILS. I cannot imagine checking patrons in and out without it. It makes the process quick, easy, and personable. We can keep track of patron accounts more easily than ever. We are able to find books, DVDs, or other materials that are in our system in just seconds, saving us so much time. ### 4. Love Polaris **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Caitlin S. | Reference Librarian And Help Desk Assistant, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 15, 2018 **What do you like best about Polaris ILS?** My favorite feature about Polaris is that it lets you search by various identifiers. For example, you can search a book by author, barcode, or title. You can also search people by both their first and last names. **What do you dislike about Polaris ILS?** I wish it contained a spell check or some way to catch phrases that are similiar. For example, if I was looking for a book called "I Am a Champion" but it's actually called "I Am a Winner" I wish that it would come up in the search terms. Sometimes I don't know the exact title of the book I'm looking for, and this makes it difficult. **Recommendations to others considering Polaris ILS:** Please consider putting a spell check or exproximate phrase in your search bars. Something like google uses. **What problems is Polaris ILS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Polaris makes it easy to notify patrons of overdue books and to put books on hold for patrons. ### 5. Intuitive and friendly. **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Libraries | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 13, 2018 **What do you like best about Polaris ILS?** It’s very user friendly for librarians. I find it easier than most ILS programs. Specific reasons why I would suggest it is because they are running LEAP through POLARIS which allows the system to be browser based. This gives librarians an opportunity to be able to take this with them when doing outreach. **What do you dislike about Polaris ILS?** Sometimes there are glitches — it’s by far not a perfect ILS. Sometimes searching for what you want can be a hassle. **What problems is Polaris ILS solving and how is that benefiting you?** It’s great for organizing meta data on various materials. There are a lot of categories for the vast array of things out library distributes. ### 6. Polaris is a good ILS **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Libraries | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 21, 2017 **What do you like best about Polaris ILS?** I liked how specific you could be with your search. You can limit by branch, collection, whether the item is in the library or not. When you do a keyword search you can limit it a lot, by all results featuring this word or omitting a certain word. Very helpful in that way. When results show up it is very clear whether the item is available and where it is located. **What do you dislike about Polaris ILS?** Having all these search options meant that there was too many ways to do one thing. You could try to do the same thing five different ways and come up with different search results each time. Some ways were inefficient as well. Also if you leave an "s" off of a word for example, searching for books about airplanes vs. airplane will yield very different results. I disliked the public side of the catalog. I found it hard to use and customers often would be unable to find what they were looking for. **Recommendations to others considering Polaris ILS:** It is a good product, not the best ILS, but better than others. Very good for specific searches. Not that great for patrons. Searches on the patron side yield unrelated items even if you are very specific on what you limit your search by. **What problems is Polaris ILS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Working with public to help them locate catalog items, patron records- fines etc. ### 7. Polaris ILS is fantastic even for beginners **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Libraries | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 21, 2018 **What do you like best about Polaris ILS?** I love how easy it is to jump into or teach new hires how to use it **What do you dislike about Polaris ILS?** I wish there was another level of personaliztion that could be tailored to each branches needs. **Recommendations to others considering Polaris ILS:** If you need a way to centralize library info into one system this is for you **What problems is Polaris ILS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Allows libraries to centralize patron info ### 8. Circulation assistant **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rachel E. T. | Archives Assistant, Libraries, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 09, 2018 **What do you like best about Polaris ILS?** Easy to put multiple holds on. Easy to utilize the patron record information. **What do you dislike about Polaris ILS?** How particular the search terms need to be **What problems is Polaris ILS solving and how is that benefiting you?** - ### 9. Takes a bit to learn **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Libraries | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 17, 2017 **What do you like best about Polaris ILS?** Once you learn how to use the program, some things, such as cataloging and creating new records, is pretty simple. Also, the bulk mode for checking items in is pretty useful. **What do you dislike about Polaris ILS?** Even after having used Polaris for 3 1/2 years, I still sometimes have a difficult time finding information or figuring out how to do or search things. It's not a very intuitive program. **What problems is Polaris ILS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are able to put items into record sets to save time with cataloging and changing item statuses. ### 10. Fairly easy software to use **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Government Administration | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 13, 2018 **What do you like best about Polaris ILS?** Quick key functions to pull up most used features and ability to quickly switch through them. **What do you dislike about Polaris ILS?** Polaris would at times crash or boot me out of the system without logging me off. It would also allow my user credentials to be enter into 2 separate terminals that led to some discrepancies on my end of night count out. The 3 step log out was a little bogged down. **What problems is Polaris ILS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Polaris is set up to be very user friendly allowing for even new employees to offer quick and effiecent customer service. ### 11. Polaris ILS review **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jason R. | Library Assistant, Human Resources, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 24, 2017 **What do you like best about Polaris ILS?** The item check-in system is very easy to use. **What do you dislike about Polaris ILS?** The Polaris system would have a myriad of crashes. **Recommendations to others considering Polaris ILS:** N/A **What problems is Polaris ILS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Polaris has made it very simple to keep track of every patron's account information. ### 12. Polaris ILS **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 19, 2017 **What do you like best about Polaris ILS?** It's widely used in the public library setting and they have offices located nearby. It's always been easy to get in touch with someone locally for assistance with the ILS. **What do you dislike about Polaris ILS?** I dislike the number of upgrades it requires. **What problems is Polaris ILS solving and how is that benefiting you?** The Polaris ILS helps with almost all system administrative tasks, as well as circulation. It offers benefits such as clear reports for determining collection development. ### 13. Finicky program **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Libraries | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 29, 2017 **What do you like best about Polaris ILS?** Has the ability to do a lot, tons of options of sorting, configuring, and adding items. **What do you dislike about Polaris ILS?** Slow as molasses, requires a lot of hand over hand step by step. **What problems is Polaris ILS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Tracking thousands of items over multiple branches. ### 14. Polaris Review **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Libraries | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 25, 2017 **What do you like best about Polaris ILS?** Polaris is very easy to use for registrations. **What do you dislike about Polaris ILS?** Polaris can be complicated when switching between librarian and circulation modes. **What problems is Polaris ILS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Polaris is has helped us with registering patrons and new material types. - [View Polaris ILS pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/polaris-ils/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-12+03%3A05%3A15+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=953338ec-fa1a-4e51-ac4e-c5913b646d1f&secure%5Btoken%5D=bfddd92143c8d7c51d11ef37a3bba845dc39d760081809b50138a2fd47a0aecd&format=llm_user) ## Top Polaris ILS Alternatives - [SirsiDynix Symphony](https://www.g2.com/products/sirsidynix-symphony/reviews) - 3.7/5.0 (16 reviews) - [Follett Destiny Library Manager](https://www.g2.com/products/follett-software-follett-destiny-library-manager/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (430 reviews) - [Koha](https://www.g2.com/products/koha/reviews) - 4.2/5.0 (11 reviews)