News & Announcements

PINES holds have proven to be challenging to administer because of the size of the consortium, the geographic area covered by it, the sheer number of items that move about the state, and the system processes that control holds. As the PINES community gained experience with the pros and cons of statewide lending, the membership developed guidelines and management solutions and directed development of software solutions to fulfill the goal of statewide lending through holds.

The upgrade to 2.5 brought us several new features. The two that we've enabled today are the ability to use Address Alerts and the ability to link library holdings in the OPAC to the library's web page for address/contact information. These are optional features, so each library system's Director will determine whether or not to implement them and the system's Local Admin will configure them. More information and instructions at:

We've posted the dates for several upcoming PINES training conferences for staff around different parts of the state at:

http://pines.georgialibraries.org/training

More information and sign-up forms will be posted there as they become available.

PINES now has its own Facebook page, distinct from GPLS's Facebook page. Please like the page to get news about new PINES features, upgrades, and other PINES-news for libray staff and library users.

https://www.facebook.com/georgialibrarypines

Have you ever wanted to narrow down your search results to a specific area within a particular library? You can now do so by using the Advanced Search screen of the PINES Catalog - when you select a specific library branch using the "Search Library" box, a new "Shelving Location" box will appear with the available shelving locations for that library branch.

The newest version of PINES is now available! It features several improvements in the staff client interface as well as several new features for library users such as the Kids' Catalog (KPAC) and the ability to Browse by author, title, series, and subject.

Georgia Public Library Service will officially unveil its new Kids’ PINES Catalog as part of Children’s Day at the Capitol on Thursday, Jan. 23. The catalog will be used at more than 250 libraries around the state.

The PINES Annual Membership Meeting, the Public Library Directors Meeting, and the PINES Executive Committee Meeting will be held the week of May 12th at Warner-Robins College in Macon. See the Meetings page for additional information as it becomes available.

The PINES system will be upgraded from version 2.3.6 to version 2.5.1 between January 16-January 21, 2014.

During this time, the online catalog and self-service features will be unavailable, and library staff will be unable to retrieve patron account information. Please check with your local library to determine whether or not they will remain open and whether or not they will allow books to be checked out during this time period.

Originally posted by Chris Sharp, PINES System Administrator, on October 1, 2013:

Two weeks ago I had the privilege of attending the Evergreen Hack-a-Way, a mini-conference of the Evergreen development community developers and other technical staff from all over North America.

The staff client memory leak was one of the main topics of discussion.  As the PINES libraries know, these leaks are under active investigation by Equinox at GPLS's behest, and they, along with other issues have brought the question of the future of the staff client to the fore.