“Joel Hahn Joins SirsiDynix, Merrimack Valley Library Consortium Rejoins” by S.M. O’Connor

Lehi, Utah-based SirsiDynix made announcements in late July and early August that Joel Hahn had joined the company and Merrimack Valley Library Consortium in Massachusetts had become a customer again. SirsiDynix announced on Friday, July 28, 2017 that Joel Hahn had joined its Professional Services Department. “Joel is a librarian and long-time SirsiDynix user. Joining an already well-seasoned department, the Professional Services Team will be enhanced with Joel’s extensive experience. He joins the team as a Consultant, offering his unique skills to help libraries accomplish specialized customizations with their SirsiDynix solutions.”

“We are delighted to have Joel join the SirsiDynix team,” stated SirsiDynix VP of Professional Services Tim Hyde. “Joel brings years of specialized experience working with our solutions as a customer. He joins an already outstanding team. The SirsiDynix Consulting team is a unique leader in our industry for their superb skill and customer care. The addition of Joel’s expertise gives libraries a further resource to turn to for their customization needs and enriches our team with a highly experienced customer perspective.”

Mr. Hahn has worked in libraries for twenty-four years, working with SirsiDynix systems for the last sixteen years. He earned his M.L.I.S. through Dominican University (formerly Rosary College) in west suburban River Forest, Illinois while working as a cataloger at the Niles-Maine District Library in northwest suburban Niles, Illinois from September of 1994 to January of 2014. Over time, Hahn moved from cataloging to database management. SirsiDynix stated, “As Joel grew interested in software, he became a self-taught programmer, eventually becoming one of the top contributors on SirsiDynix Listservs with a reputation as a go-to problem solver.” He was Database Manager at Cooperative Computer Services from February of 2014 to June of 2017.

“Given my unique background, working for SirsiDynix is very interesting for me,” said Hahn. “My new position will enable me to keep doing the custom work I’ve been doing, but on a grander scale. I’ll be able to help more than just the local group I was serving; with SirsiDynix Consulting I’ll now be serving a global customer base.”

SirsiDynix stated, “Joel is known among the SirsiDynix community for his expertise in APIs and web services. The SirsiDynix Consulting Team is a perfect fit for Joel, as he will be helping BLUEcloud libraries take full advantage of SirsiDynix’s robust APIs and web services.”

On Wednesday, August 2, 2017, SirsiDynix announced that the Merrimack Valley Library Consortium (M.V.L.C.) had become a customer again. “Formerly a Horizon library, MVLC spent the last few years as an Open Source customer. However, in early 2017 they chose to rejoin the SirsiDynix family and become a Symphony library on the Enterprise discovery system. Merrimack Valley Library Consortium went live with Enterprise earlier this year.”

“Enterprise is a modern discovery tool, providing libraries with a fresh interface and configurable search experience. Enterprise provides the discovery of both physical and electronic content in a single solution, for a better end-user experience.

Along with using Enterprise as their new online catalog, MVLC has selected Syndetics Unbound for their catalog enrichment service.

Syndetics Unbound, a ProQuest enrichment solution, works with Enterprise to give the user an enhanced and modern browsing experience. Unbound integrates well with SirsiDynix technology because of robust API and web services, which allow for smooth integration of third party tools.”

Eric Graham, Executive Director of the Merrimack Valley Library Consortium, stated, “The beauty of bringing this new product live is the amount of attention we’ve gotten from our partners at SirsiDynix and ProQuest. They have provided MVLC with outstanding service and have made our transition easy. Whenever we encountered roadblocks or we had questions, they were there for us.”

The Merrimack Valley Library Consortium went live with both Enterprise and the Syndetics Unbound enhancement on Thursday, May 18, 2017. “We want our customers to know that when they work with us, they are family,” stated SirsiDynix CEO Bill Davison. “Here at SirsiDynix, each customer is important to us, and we work to make their transition to us easy and stress-free. We are also dedicated to producing Best-of-Breed software that works well with third party software and enhancement systems so that our customers can truly create the best user experience for their library.”

The Merrimack Valley Library Consortium is a member-driven, patron-focused library network serving thirty-six public libraries in the greater Merrimack Valley region of Massachusetts.[1] The library networks of Massachusetts are analogous to the Illinois Regional Library Systems, but the Merrimack Valley Library Consortium only serves public libraries. M.V.L.C. libraries circulated over 5,000,000 items in 2016. The M.V.L.C. is a member-governed support organization that enables librarians in the public libraries of the Merrimack Valley region of Massachusetts to serve their towns. These public libraries serve a total of 766,883 residents of Massachusetts.

The origins of SirsiDynix lie with Northwestern University’s effort to automate its library card catalogs in the 1960s. Today, the company provides over 23,000 library facilities in seventy countries with library automation goods and services. In 2005, SirsiDynix acquired Docutek, a vendor that provides academic libraries and school libraries with e-learning solutions. Two years later, Vista Equity Partners acquired SirsiDynix. In 2013, SirsiDynix acquired EOS International, a vendor that provides special libraries with cloud-based software. In December of 2014, ICV Partners had acquired majority stake ownership in SirsiDynix from Vista Equity Partners, but Vista would retain minority ownership, as SirsiDynix and ICV Partners announced on Tuesday, January 6, 2015. ICV Partners stated, “SirsiDynix is a global leading provider of integrated library system (“ILS”) software to over 23,000 libraries and is a leading player in the public library segment. ILS software is a specialized enterprise resource planning software for libraries, used to track books and collateral owned, patron borrowings, track orders and bills, and provide the front-end user interface for library patrons.” Marshall Breeding included the mergers and acquisitions that led to the creation SirsiDynix in a graphic that depicted mergers and acquisitions in library automation between 1976 and 2015.

[1] The Merrimack Valley is a river valley that stretches along two states: south-central New Hampshire and northeastern Massachusetts. The Merrimack River is hook-shaped. It flows southward from the confluence of the Pemigewasset River and the Winnipesaukee River in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, to a point west of Lowell, Massachusetts, where it turns northeastward and flows to the Atlantic Ocean. Mills in the industrial towns that sprang up along the Merrimack River harnessed waterpower in the production of textiles and hosiery between the 1850s and 1930s.

The Field Museum of Natural History in March, 2018

The Field Museum of Natural History’s entrance pavilions are at opposite ends of Stanley Field Hall, which has a north-south axis. The two porticos (porches) are each reached by two successive flights of stairs.

Both porticos of The Field Museum of Natural History are flanked by two small porches, which each have two caryatids (columns in the shape of maidens). On the facade, the wings are adorned with a colonnade of attached fluted Ionic columns. The building’s fluted Ionic columns have volutes (spiral-scroll-shaped crowns).

Each portico of The Field Museum is tetrastyle in antis with double-ranked fluted Ionic columns capped by volutes. An entablature crowned by a pediment rests atop the columns. The continuous frieze in each case is relatively plain. The wave-themed acroteria that crown the pediments are borrowed from the Palace of a Fine Arts, which housed The Field Museum until 1920 and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Field Museum of Natural History isn’t “just” a museum. Visitors can watch scientists at work through windows at the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice DNA Discovery Center’s Pritzker Laboratory.

Mrs. Charles (Laura) Schweppe, a daughter and co-heiress of John Graves Shedd, the former partner of Marshall Field I who succeeded him as president of Marshall Field & Company, and who, under the guidance of Stanley Field founded the Shedd Aquarium, donated an exhibit of 100 bronze sculptures by Malvina Hoffman to The Field Museum. They represent every race, nation, and tribe in the human family (more or less). On January 9, 1933, the first group, Unity of Man, went on display.

In addition to the four figures Henry Hering (1874-1949) made for the corners of Stanley Field Hall, he also made the twelve plaster round lion head shield escutcheons that line it. These are replicas of the marble round lion head shield escutcheon he made for the pediment of the facade of The Field Museum of Natural History.

Christmas at Chicago’s Union Station

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a POLAR EXPRESS display in the Great Hall of Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a closeup of the THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is the headlamp of THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Union Station Company rail car loaded with super-size gifts is part of THE POLAR EXPRESS mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Union Station in downtown Chicago has emblems of Amtrak, Metra, and historic railroad companies whose routes they now operate like Burlington.

Cinemas sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) Helped Design

This is the Pickwick Theatre Building, an Art Deco movie palace and office building erected in downtown Park Ridge, Illinois in 1928.

The architects were Roscoe Harold Zook and William F. McCaughey. Sculptor Alfonso Iannelli, who also worked on the Adler Planetarium, contributed to this building.

In recent years, the Vlahakis family, who’ve owned the building for 50 years, have been able to turn the building into a multiplex by adding smaller theaters around the original auditorium. The latest one, with a screen four times the size of the one in the auditorium, will open in time to screen INFINITY WARS in May, if all goes well.

The Catlow Movie Theater is a cinema that opened in downtown Barrington, Illinois in 1927. The Tudor Revival style of architecture is not confined to the facade of the cinema. As with the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Illinois, sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) played a role in the design and decoration of The Catlow Movie Theater.