Library Systems - What others are there?

[newpersn]

We are currently using Heritage and possably looking to move away in the near future.

 

What other Library systems are there? and how much do you pay?

[elsiegee40]

The big player is Micro Librarian Systems with Eclipse.net for Secondary and Junior Librarian for Primary

 

I came close to getting Junior Librarian in at my last school ... twice ... but got defeated by trustee politics. I was Librarian as well as running the IT network. We had it all in a cr@ppy Access database system put together by the son of my predecessor in Windows 98 days.

Edited November 7, 2016 by elsiegee40

[newpersn]

The big player is Micro Librarian Systems with Eclipse.net for Secondary and Junior Librarian for Primary

 

I came close to getting Junior Librarian in at my last school ... twice ... but got defeated by trustee politics. I was Librarian as well as running the IT network. We had it all in a cr@ppy Access database system put together by the son of my predecessor in Windows 98 days.

 

See hertiage just looks like it was made in 98. No face upgrade. Still looks the same when i started about 6 years ago.

 

I'll give ISOxford there credit with there support. But i feel it might be time to move on. I'm unsure how much we pay a year for support. And there only time we had to use there support is when we moved servers and 64bit BioStore install.

[MatthewL]

Oliver

Galaxy (used in many LA libraries)

 

To name 2.

[unixman_again]

Koha - we used it in one school I worked at - you can't beat the price!

Capita also do one - I'll say no more.

We use Heritage where I am now.

[mikeprice]

If you want a very basic and cheap version - that works - we use Handy Library from Prima Soft

 

works OK - you can also attach the database to Access to do anything the interface can't do

[Sagima]

We use MLS eclipse hosted

[synaesthesia]

We use Eclipse and a couple of primaries use Junior Librarian. The products themselves are OK but support from MLS has been diabolical for years. Simple things like AD integration are made overcomplicated if you have a lot of users and they don't seem to be interested in improving that.

[seustice]

Of late we've found Softlink (Oliver) support to be abysmal, and that's being polite. They've had a restructure and they haven't quite figured out yet what they're doing.

 

I'm being very restrained.

[Griff]

We use MLS here no real issues just the usual pain of putting new intakes on etc!

[RLR]

MLS here also. Not really had any issues. Can be a bit of a nightmare when you need to do new intakes.

[LeMarchand]

Junior Librarian non-hosted at 2 schools (basically free as it was bought and we no longer pay for support), but I'm pretty sure they no longer offer that option. Hosted at t'other, which I don't think is cheap but everybody seems keen to rush to the cloud. Adding new intakes is a pain and I'm not wowed by the interface in either version, but it does seem simple enough for users.

[jonspurs]

Anyone know what library systems to look out for at BETT?

[LeMarchand]

Anyone know what library systems to look out for at BETT?

 

MLS have just sent me an email saying they're there. (This is not a necessarily recommendation, just a statement of fact).

[TwistedHelixis]

We are trying to move away from Junior Librarian because of the support they offer, or lack of.

[enjay]

My last school had MLS Eclipse, we have Access-It here. It isn't as pretty or professional-looking as MLS, but it is about 1/4 of the price too. It links to SIMS via Groupcall, so students are automatically added as borrowers including reg group details, email address, photo. Overdue reminders can be emailed out (automatically I think, but it might involve the librarian clicking a couple of buttons to send them all).

 

We run it on our own server, but there is a hosted option too. Web interface for students to log in and browse catalogue, review loans, etc (lacks SSO unlike Eclipse, which is a shame). They can only log in with their SIMS admission number too, which most of them don't know (even though it is also their ID for the MFDs).

 

Access-It support is okay. Quite slow to get to resolution, and quick to blame "internal network errors" for any problem but they do get there in the end.

[ReadTheNetwork]

How much more expensive is MLS compared to Oliver? At moment we are using Oliver, and just wondering how MLS compares to Oliver.

 

Thanks

[AlanD]

Another Eclipse (.net version) user here. Can't understand why they are charging so much for hosted version - so we run it on our MIS box. I agree with some earlier comments that INTAKE is always a nightmare... student who change names, leave, then return, being careful not to delete users who leave but might still be chased for overdue books. Would be good if all data came from AD and MIS and library systems added their data to that....with school admin staff responsible for creating and updating AD entries.

[Asgard]

We are currently using Heritage and possably looking to move away in the near future.

 

What other Library systems are there? and how much do you pay?

 

We use Heritage and we are about to move to Koha.

 

St Helens College moved their entire library system from Heritage to Koha and after seeing theirs in action were following them.

 

Heritage support is fantastic it's a shame it's awful on the eye.

[eddyc]

We binned Softlink Oliver over Christmas to go to MLS Eclipse Hosted.

 

Softlink support had gone to the dogs. In all the updates in the 6 years that I have worked at the school have broken things on the way. Heavy reliance on Java with no timeline for HTML5, hence us deciding it was time for a change.

[CMDRShepard]

Our librarian was looking at picking up Eclipse Hosted, but we couldn't justify the price (IT are footing the library software bill, go figure). Anyone had any experience first hand with this Koha before I dive straight in?

[Asgard]

Our librarian was looking at picking up Eclipse Hosted, but we couldn't justify the price (IT are footing the library software bill, go figure). Anyone had any experience first hand with this Koha before I dive straight in?

 

I can put you in touch with my new techie who is setting ours up and used it at his last job at St Helens

Edited May 3, 2017 by Asgard

[mikeprice]

Our librarian was looking at picking up Eclipse Hosted, but we couldn't justify the price (IT are footing the library software bill, go figure). Anyone had any experience first hand with this Koha before I dive straight in?

 

It was set up here when I started - but was unfinished - I never managed to get it to pick up anything except old books (Tom Sawyer and the like) from the national Library of Congress

anything newer just wouldn't connect to any source - even though teh firewall was set to allow anything through

 

Hence switching to Handy Library - cheap and cheerful and just worked

[enjay]

IT are footing the library software bill, go figure

I pay for the library software here, too. All cross-department or cross-curricular software/website subscriptions come from IT. Also, all software or subscription purchases from any specific team go across my desk even though they pay the money, so I can check compatibility, update the homepage/links page and if necessary support the team in adding students. It also ensures I can keep our data protection statement up-to-date.

[ReBoot]

I've some experience setting up Koha and have now transferred my school's catalogue to Koha. Some observations.

 

Setting up a vanilla server is relatively straightforward even from bare metal using Linux. Can be done in an hour or two.

 

There are a myriad of configuration options so play around and get it working to fit your environment then reinstall. Luckily Koha keeps a very detailed log of every configuration change made so its very easy to document your preferences.

 

You can only import your catalogue into Koha in one of the MARC variants. The Junior Librarian MARC export is broken and only outputs a subset of the information you need. I exported the complete catalogue as a csv then translated into MARC for import. There are tools to help with this such as MARCEdit but its time consuming and you will need to understand MARC basics. This took me around a week to complete.

 

Patrons or users can be imported from csv so nothing too difficult here.

 

The finished system looks good and has a nice self checkout feature not unlike Junior Librarian which lets pupils take items by scanning an ID card and item barcode. It can also be configured to pull title information and cover images from Amazon.

 

Edited May 8, 2017 by ReBoot