Hi there. Our school is looking into getting Junior Librarian. It seems very expensive to me and perhaps overkill for our school. Does anyone know of alternative solutions? Also, for those who have tried Junior Librarian, would you recommend it?
Thanks!
We have it. It keeps breaking.
I've had to give the librarian local admin rights so that it works properly.
0/10 would not recommend.
We have used it for years and it does the job but is tedious to use. The annual support fee is outrageous in my opinion. Kids like it. We had the fingerprint thingy but that was useless, the kids had to wipe their hands first and it cost a fortune in wet wipes. You still had to help it by entering the class and even them it often got the wrong child. According to Microlibrabrian it was because their fingers were too small.
Which means it isn't fit for purpose. And as such, you can get a refund.Originally Posted by laserblazer
May I also point out, that when we got the install disk it was blank.
And you can't get software updates unless you subscribe to their support. So, if you have a dodgy version you're out of luck unless you're willing to pay for the support.
We have recently gone onto the web version and it was a bit of a PITA to sort out, but the support people are VERY good and VERY helpful.
The web version is easy to use and has some good features. People can look at the library from any computer, even at home to see what we have and what they or their children might borrow.
However, we use the fingerprint thingy and it means that children acting as librarians have to have local admin rights when using the software - in the end I took the PC off the network all together as all sorts of access issues kept arising.
*we have the latest web version and have had no issues with fingerprints - this school starts at year 3 - so the children are pretty small.
Last edited by witch; 27th June 2012 at 11:53 AM.
I've used both Junior Librarian 3 (local install) and the web version. The web version requires Silverlight, which is an additional component to install.
Initially the web version was extremely problematic, but it is now much improved. I still prefer the local install version. It does what it says on the tin, however unfortunately I don't think you can buy it anymore (for a long time).
We have it....
we have the web version, very slow to acces first thing in the morning but support guys are helpful about problems.
I find its trying to over complicate itself when a simple job could be done.
Thanks for the comments everyone. Does anyone recommend any other software? We want something the children can use themselves.
As for Junior Librarian.net we wouldn't be wanting to pay the support costs (£507/year) and it's already expensive enough so we definitely are expecting a lot out of it if we get it!
We use the local version and have done for 5 plus years now. Never had a single issue with it, and stopped paying for the support 3 or 4 years ago. Didn't bother with any of the clever (or not so clever) finger print stuff.
Steve
ive not had a single user say they prefer the online version but thats possibly because via the lea isp you have to login to use the internet and it times out every 10 mins or so (sometime it will time out for no aparent reason) making it a roght royal pita
Has anyone looked into Delicious Library? I know it's quite a left field solution but it's cheap and user friendly.
From Delicious Monster?
It's only for Mac, so no.
We've used the local version of Junior Librarian for a good few years now... we use the barcode system with the books, and the kids have a card they scan with a unique name/id on. Not had any problems with it and it seems to work just fine under a standard domain user account for us. Recently took it from XP to Win7 without a hitch.
A school I work at uses Junior Librarian and it works OK, but I think it is damn expensive. At a previous school, we ran Koha for five years and found it brilliant. The only problem was with the LEA, who wouldn't allow the Z39.50 protocol through their firewall (mostly I suspect because they didn't know what it was). We had to run an ADSL line to get the automatic cataloguing function to work (needs Z39.50). We always found the Koha community extremely helpful if we had problems (which to be honest, we never did - it just worked!).
I've just been told that we need to pay £507/year for their data hosting. I thought we could host it ourselves but apparently not. Is this the case or are they just telling me this to get our money?
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