School Library System

[wibble_89]

Hello All,

 

Please help and save me!

 

We currently use Oliver as our library system. We are on V3.4 and are well out of date! The library department are looking at a new system and have asked us in IT to look at the technical side of things.

 

I can help but notice that the two they have chosen seem very expensive for frankly no real gain! The two contenders are:

 

Oliver (latest version):

 

- About 5K one off purchase.

- About 1K per year support.

- Their test website is only designed to work on about 19" screens as the whole website is an overlayed image. The answer from support was to use IE to zoom in until the links work!

- Their iPad version links through to their web page making it impossible to use.

 

Eclipse:

 

- Their website look good and works reasonable well.

- Their is concern about their support behind the scenes.

 

The bottom line is, I can't believe that in this day and age their are only 2 systems geared up to schools!

 

Any suggestions? Recommendations?

 

Ollie

[FN-GM]

We moved from Oliver to Eclipse. Both as bad as each other. Eclipse is more child friendly but its runs like and dog and they say its normal. Support isn't very good either, long wait times, no reply to messages and they don't seem to be updating the on site version of eclipse.

[wibble_89]

Oh really? Oliver just look so bad and runs like a dog too! I dont feel confident with either of them to be honest!

 

I think their is a niche in the market for a new build here!

[Bananas]

You could look at these guys:

 

Welcome to the Heritage Cirqa Library System Website | Heritage Library Management Software

 

Had them at previous school, I never used it but it had regular updates and no one ever complained about it

[wibble_89]

Shall do. Thanks.

[m1k3r]

Go open source and save a fortune! - OpenBiblio | Main / OpenBiblio browse

 

I used this to replace Heritage and the librarian couldn't be happier, it's completely web based and is quick and responsive. I've also written an addon which fetches all of the book information from the ISBN number so it makes adding new books to the library very painless. I will be happy to share if you go down this route.

 

It handles everything from the management side of things with all sorts of reports and also offers a some what basic open gateway for students to search the library.

 

And because it's open source you can modify it to work the way you want instead of changing the way you work to fit the system.

[Irazmus]

There's also Koha

 

Again it's free and open source and can pull book info from online catalogues (like the British Library). Although getting the connections to online catalogues can be tricky as the protocol used can't run through an HTTP proxy so you will need some outbound ports opening, which not all RBCs/county councils are happy to do. Ours took a little persuading.

 

We were going to replace Junior Librarian with this until we realised that many of the ISBNs in our database were incorrect so we couldn't perform a direct migration, and with the school closing next year, it wasn't deemed economical to do it manually.

[AngryTechnician]

I'd recommend having a look at Access-It. Yes, their website is a Flash-based monstrosity, and like most LMS systems these days the product itself runs on Java, but it causes me very little trouble and I've had two successive librarians who are happy with it.

[markberry]

I'm currently looking for a new system at the moment. We had Oliver in the past, then moved to MLS a year ago after seeing a lovely demo at BETT. What a mistake that was.

 

I'll have a look at Access-IT as I've not come across that one before.

 

Does anyone have any other recommendations?

 

Does anyone know which systems universities use? I would assume that as libraries are an integral part of university life that their systems are pretty robust and work well!