Oliver Library System

[nelliott]

I am looking at purchasing Oliver library system for our school. Please can any one advise me of any pros/cons on the system?

[rad]

We use its sister software, Alice. We don't have many issues with it. Can't comment on how it works, I only get called when it breaks!

[truebluesteve]

We use Oliver here and it seems OK although I'm not a librarian so can't really comment on it operationally. Our librarian feels there are better systems out there but I can't remember the name of one that she mentioned to me recently - no wait its called Eclipse. Apparently the Chartered Institute of Librarians are having a roadshow soon that will demonstrate the various systems.

 

From a technical point of view its very stable and we haven't needed to use their support very often. I do feel that they want to charge for anything that they deem is even slightly outside their remit. Fort example I wanted to add a biometric fingerprint reader to one of the library admin PCs and asked for Softlinks help. They wanted £300 to do what was about 30 minutes work, so I phoned Biostore and they helped me do it for free!

[themightymrp]

We have Oliver here and it seems to be a good system (according to the librarian). They offer either an onsite or fully hosted solution which is good in terms of backups and upgrades. I've heard good things about Eclipse too but haven't seen the system myself.

 

Oliver has good options for a student access version (to check for a particular book etc) including a primary school level friendly version called 'Olly'

[sllorep]

Did some research into systems before we decided to either upgrade our Oliver system from v3 to v5 or switch to a new one. A lot of schools use MLS’s Eclipse. We decided to upgrade our Oliver instead of switching to Eclipse because Oliver offers more customisability. We didn’t like the look of the OPAC homepage for Eclipse, it was too busy. You have a fair amount for freedom with the Oliver OPAC so it’s much more fun to use if you’re technically minded.

 

Eclipse is very much an “all-in” package and you can’t chop and change in the same way with add-ons, so if your budget changes there’s not much you can do. I’ve also heard that some people haven’t had a smooth ride with MLS support. Softlink’s support is great and they’re usually very quick to reply.

 

Softlink are currently rolling out a new look v5, which I must admit does make it look much more modern. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Oliver to other school librarians.

Edited September 25, 2015 by sllorep