MLS eclipse replacement - Accessitlibrary??

[timbo343]

We are about to renew our annual maintenance subscription for our OnPrem Eclipse.net system and i found https://accessitlibrary.com. After hearing all the stories from fellow edugeekers on here, i think i will tell them not to bother.

 

Has anyone seen or used this system before? Looking at the dashboard overview on their site it looks a better system than MLS however it doesn't show us what the librarian or what we see. If anyone has used it can you please let me know how good it is and if you've used MLS in the past, how does it compare?

 

Will they import MLS data? Will it work with SSO AD? Does it work with barcode scanning? Does it have a biometeric database?

 

I will be putting a list together of what our MLS system currently does.

 

Thanks

[3s-gtech]

Be very careful if you are thinking about not renewing - MLS need an unreasonable notice period and will insist that you 'have to' renew if you don't give them enough. I got caught, so I said "that's fine - here's twelve months notice, I won't be subscribing again". I know you've used their support recently to help fix your install, but I think it's probably time to move.

[timbo343]

Be very careful if you are thinking about not renewing - MLS need an unreasonable notice period and will insist that you 'have to' renew if you don't give them enough. I got caught, so I said "that's fine - here's twelve months notice, I won't be subscribing again". I know you've used their support recently to help fix your install, but I think it's probably time to move.

Thanks, i'll let my bursar deal with that one 😉.

 

We could go down the avenue of using their support once in the last 12 months and no upgrades have come about since october 16.

[timbo343]

I've spoken to accessit and they say MLS notification period is 3 months.

[Decimas6]

I've spoken to accessit and they say MLS notification period is 3 months.

Do you happen to know where pricing is in comparison to MLS? We have the self hosted internal MLS and never updated due to cost (nevermind the bad press).

[timbo343]

Do you happen to know where pricing is in comparison to MLS? We have the self hosted internal MLS and never updated due to cost (nevermind the bad press).

 

They base their pricing on the number of students.

 

For us (~750 students) about £828 for the hosted core option.

 

~£1220 per year with the all the add-ons (SSO, SIMS integration, accelerated Reader, Security Gates (SIP2) )

 

Give them a ring and see what they will quote you.

[Decimas6]

They base their pricing on the number of students.

 

For us (~750 students) about £828 for the hosted core option.

 

~£1220 per year with the all the add-ons (SSO, SIMS integration, accelerated Reader, Security Gates (SIP2) )

 

Give them a ring and see what they will quote you.

 

Thanks for the info, pricing seems competitive at least.

[timbo343]

Thanks for the info, pricing seems competitive at least.

 

Three's obviously a charge too for converting the database from MLS to AccessIt

[liam84728]

My librarian isn't happy with MLS either and has been looking at Softlink - Does anyone know much about them? Prices she mentioned seemed competitive

[timbo343]

My librarian isn't happy with MLS either and has been looking at Softlink - Does anyone know much about them? Prices she mentioned seemed competitive

Isn't softlink oliver? I heard this is basic and a bit slow.

[liam84728]

Thanks for the feedback but I think she wants to go with Oliver, a number of schools in our area have switched to it from AccessIT and MLS and were a lot more impressed with the speed of the system (on AWS so no lag time at all) and functionality - She tells me the reports she can run with Oliver are miles ahead of the ones available with AccessIT and the interface appears to be more engaging - students can leave reviews, have book recommendations based on individual borrowing history etc.

Going hosted, Linking with SIMS, Data migration - prices were highly competitive in comparison to others mentioned on here.

[timbo343]

We are going ahead with MLS hosted to see how it goes. They are offering discounts but you don't know until you try it and then you can make your own decision!

 

It's a bit like parent messaging systems. Most that i spoke to use schoolcomms but schoolcomms didn't work for us.

 

During the year we will be looking at other systems such as Oliver and AccessIt to see how they compare.

[liam84728]

That's interesting to hear, the girl from MLS has been calling the librarian non stop this week.

 

Just wondering what they might try and offer us to stay... how did they swing it to stop you from going with AccessIT?

[timbo343]

That's interesting to hear, the girl from MLS has been calling the librarian non stop this week.

 

Just wondering what they might try and offer us to stay... how did they swing it to stop you from going with AccessIT?

 

The librarian hasn't looked at AccessIt and the offer they are running with is until the end of Dec. The mixed feelings we are getting from other schools in North Yorkshire are Eclipse is ok and other schools have reported the slowness so i said, "you don't know unless you try it". Sometimes you have to take a chance otherwise you will be always thinking what if! At least if we try it and it's rubbish we can say we tried it and look at something else.

 

If it works ok outside of school and not internally then yes we have an issue. If it doesn't work well outside then we will move to another provider once the year is up.

 

We plan to look at other systems in the new year.

[david_1152]

I spoke to MLS at BETT yesterday and frankly came away offended. The guy said 'well nobody else has your problems with MLS Sir' - meaning it must be me - right? 'We've got 60% of the market share, if we had issues like you have described we wouldn't now would we?' - again it's all my fault.

 

I said, if it's all me - have you read some of the reports on Edugeek at all? Their response - 'Well Sir, only curtain type of people use Edugeek' - meaning what exactly?! I pointed out that he was right, the people who use Edugeek are the people who have to try and keep his failing piece of software going.

 

Clearly I wasn't the right person to be talking to them in front of new potential customers, but to be fair, I didn't know I was. They were on the Capita stand and didn't have any identification of who they were. I got led over to see something new and found myself looking at MLS..

 

After basically saying everything was my fault I was rushed over to their head technical guy. He promised he'd be intouch, said he was unaware of any issues, but said if things did not work right it was because they were in the middle of moving over to a Microsoft platform. I didn't go looking to confront them, one of my remits was to see other Library systems. Oh Oliver had took a year off..

 

I expect they will be in touch, but frankly we've had enough. We're looking to move and considering options. Hoping to get AccessIT in for a demo once BETT is over. If anyone in Birmingham wants to see that, drop me a PM and we could watch it together.

 

 

Dave

[kevin_lane]

My librarian has had a demo and she loved it and it does everything she needs it to do she says and we'll I'm going to bett and I might just give them a hand write notice of termination lol

[david_1152]

look for the guys in Orange on the Capita stand. I'm sure they'll blame you for their poor software. Oh well.

[liam84728]

Switched to a hosted Oliver system a couple of weeks ago, system is really fast and librarian is very happy - well priced compared to eclipse and would highly recommend!

[deano3693]

We've just signed with AccessIT and will be migrating over the Summer! Looks miles better than MLS and is hosted and HTML based rather than silverlight! Was very similar in price to MLS and has the benefit of being hosted.

[liam84728]

I would be interested to know how you get on with that, we were considering Accessit too but were put off by having to have it installed locally.

[ReverentCreature]

There are much cheaper packages out there. We are just signing up to these. We don't have a big library and the interface has to be simple. If its complicated, TAs just wont use it.

 

https://www.simplelittlelibrarysystem.co.uk/

Edited January 29, 2018 by ReverentCreature

[browolf]

Apparently, we're (probably) switching to Accessit cloud from MLS (I just found out today). There's a number of other schools in our LEA switching at the same time and because of that the data migration fee of £500 has been waived. That could be an avenue to pursue for others on this thread.

[witch]

I spoke to MLS at BETT yesterday and frankly came away offended. The guy said 'well nobody else has your problems with MLS Sir' - meaning it must be me - right? 'We've got 60% of the market share, if we had issues like you have described we wouldn't now would we?' - again it's all my fault.

 

I said, if it's all me - have you read some of the reports on Edugeek at all? Their response - 'Well Sir, only curtain type of people use Edugeek' - meaning what exactly?! I pointed out that he was right, the people who use Edugeek are the people who have to try and keep his failing piece of software going.

 

Aside from being appalled at the behaviour of that guy, we have the opposite with MLS - we have the hosted system and we have had an issue with the printing of overdue book reports for months. MLS's answer is to tell us that 38 other users have the same issue...

[DSapseid]

My librarian is looking at alternatives as is having no end of issues with MLS. She says there support/product went downhill the day capita bought them. I'll get her too look at Oliver & AccessIT as alternatives.

[jonathon28]

Hi @david_1152 Our librarian is at the end of her tether with MLS. We are interested in AccessIT and we are are also in Birmingham and interested in a demo. I will PM you.