News

Action Required | Remember to Certify! The deadline for this year’s Illinois State Library Certification is on March 31, 2024. Annual certification is required of ALL library system members to retain system membership and eligibility for grants administered by the Illinois State Library, in compliance with Illinois statutes and administrative…
PrairieCat Users Group Day (PUG Day) is an annual event dedicated to professional development, networking, and continuing education for member library staff.  PUG Day 2024 is virtual this year on Thursday, September 26 and Friday, September 27, 2024. The Engagement Committee is now accepting program proposals. Please consider presenting at…
Scheduled work is being done on the PrairieCat website (support.prairiecat.info) tonight 3/18 at 5:30 PM. There may be some downtime. 
A problem was identified yesterday with the Capira mobile app: when users select a hold pickup location, that location is assigned to the next library on the list. So for example, New Lenox patrons may have the Nippersink library assigned as the hold pickup location. OCLC has identified the problem and corrected it. OCLC will be sending out a push…
ACTION: Informational We have been notified that Vega Discover will be down for maintenance for approximately one hour on March 13 at 2AM CST.  They are releasing a major update, and the system will be unresponsive at times during this period.
There are some known issues with the Events / Meetings and the Member Directory. There are duplicates and broken links. We are working with the website provider on this. (2/29/2024) Members should now be able to login using the Log in with Library Learning button on the log in page. (2/9/2024) The site was successfully updated, however, there is…
Action: Informational Winnebago Public Library District will soon be going live on PrairieCat. Beginning today (Monday, January 22) Innovative will be loading Winnebago items into the database, and patrons will be loaded soon after. Winnebago Public Library is the 138th member in PrairieCat and joins as a Fully Participating member from a…
As PrairieCat is now using Vega as our principal discovery layer/OPAC, we will be removing the “splash pages” we formerly hosted for Encore (www.prairiecat.info). If you are still using that site, it will not be available after 2/1/2024.
I am sad to inform you all that our Systems Manager, Andrew Hettinger, passed away Monday, January 15, 2024.  Andrew had worked at PrairieCat for almost 8 years, starting when PrairieCat was still under RAILS. Andrew managed our Systems group here, and many of you probably met him at a Delegates Assembly or PUG Day in the past. You can read…
ACTION: In case of system down, please call the help desk Given the weather situation and RAILS cancelling delivery today, PrairieCat has decided to close for weather on 1/12/2024.  We will continue to monitor the helpdesk phone for the regular hours today on an emergency basis. If you have a situation where Sierra or Vega is completely down…