Heritage Training

"Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education."

Mark Twain

The Benefits of Training

It makes sense to have good quality training to get the best from your investment in Heritage.

Our Training Officers are librarians or have long experience in working with libraries. This which means that they understand how libraries work and how best to communicate the principles of IT. All training provided by IS Oxford is provided by qualified training staff.

"[I] have not had an opportunity to get in touch and compliment IS Oxford on the high level training session I attended at your magnificent premises in Oxford [...] is an excellent trainer, delivering highly relevant information at a pace and level which was comfortable [...] was very flexibile and demonstrated many advanced techniques which I am already starting to build into a comprehensive plan for the extension of the Heritage system across UHL. It was great to meet people and finally put faces to names and voices and I thoroughly enjoyed the day. I am not usually one to comment upon such things, but the session proved to be of such value that I would strongly recommend other library professionals to take advantage of this service."

Nigel Brook
University Hospitals Leicester

Your training options

Training at Your Site

Available for users with their own training facilities who are keen to learn in their own environment.

Training in Oxford

At our purpose-built training suites.

‘Web Trainer’

Web-based telephone training for those with an immediate training requirement in a specific area of the system.

Regional Workshops

Hands-on half day group sessions running in your local area.

Training to Meet Your Needs

"Learning is not compulsory .. but neither is survival."

W. Edwards Deming

Our Training Manager is on hand to offer helpful guidance and advice on the best training solutions for your organisation. We help you to identify what sort of training will be required by each of your staff and how much. We take into consideration the different ability and knowledge levels and advise accordingly.
Contact Charlotte Knight-Benjafield on 01865 481041 or email .

Training Day Structure

Training in Oxford A typical training program runs from 10am until 4pm, including breaks for lunch and coffee. Lunch is included in the cost of your Oxford training package. It is held at a nearby restaurant with a choice of hot and cold menus.

Course outlines are available in advance of all structured training sessions. Help sheets are also provided in a training pack for you to take away for future reference. We also provide on request a Certificate of Attendance to show who was involved in the program and the main areas covered.

We endeavour to make your training a memorable and fulfilling experience. Indeed, in our experience groups often go away from a session working more effectively as a team, as well as having improved their individual knowledge of Heritage.

A training program may consist of some of the following elements:-

Introduction to Heritage	Serials Cataloguing
Catalogue Set-up	Serials Management
Cataloguing Process	Enquiry Set-up and Process
Create Reader Records	Acquisitions Set-up
Circulation Set-up	Acquisitions Process
Circulation Process	Stocktaking
Overdues Process/Letters and Fines	Producing Statistics/Reports
Customising the Software	System Management

Training in Oxford

There are many advantages to coming to Oxford for training:-

Fully equipped training suites to provide hands-on access for all those involved in the day.
Your designated trainer co-ordinates the hardware and software configuration in advance, allowing you and your staff to focus on learning.
You can use your own library data (if you have some).
Escape the demands and interruptions of your busy library.
Access to the wider IS Oxford team such as data conversion officers, technical support team etc.

Heritage users of all abilities are welcome to our Oxford training programs. We limit all session to a maximum of four people. Experience has shown that this is the optimum number if your team are to get the very best from the day.

Training at Your Site

On-site training is perfect for those who prefer to learn in their own environment or for those who will be unable to get staff cover to come to Oxford. All on-site training sessions are structured and can be tailored to your requirements.

Penwith College Training

Training in full flow at Penwith College

To get the best out of your on-site training program it is necessary for you to provide the following:-

One PC for every person involved in training because hands-on experience is necessary to learn effectively.
Each PC should have access to a working copy of Heritage.
A quiet environment for you and your staff to focus on learning.
A whiteboard or flip chart available so that principles can be explained with diagrams or examples.

"Just wanted to say thanks for the training day last Thursday. We all had
a really great time!"

Alex Maisey
Southgate College

"I wanted to thank you for giving us such a good day of training on
Tuesday. Our library staff were very nervous before the day, but felt so
much better by the end of the day!"

Kathy Christie
Borders College

Web Trainer

Web Trainer is a service available to all Heritage users where you can talk to a personal tutor on the telephone. It uses the latest technology to enable your tutor to see what you are doing on our PC screen while training you on the telephone.

In order to use Web Trainer all you need is a connection to the internet and a telephone (preferably with a speaker or a headset). It can be booked at short notice and at low cost.

This training service is offered in appropriate time slots, and is useful for those who need training on specific areas of the system, or need help completing a specific task or process.

The Web Trainer is easy to use and presents no security risk to your network or Heritage installation. Technical details are available for your IT colleagues if required.

Heritage Workshops

"Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results."

John Dewey

Heritage regional workshops are an ideal training solution for users who do not have an extensive training budget. There are typically ten regional workshop sessions per year. Venues include Manchester Metropolitan University and Reading Business School.

Workshop sessions are available for groups of approximately fifteen librarians from a variety of organisations. The sessions are structured with time set aside for all attendees to work through exercises to test their knowledge. Each attendee receives a Workbook outlining the content and structure of the course with accompanying exercises to take away.

This is an excellent forum to meet other librarians in your area using Heritage as well as broadening your knowledge of Heritage.

Latest details about forthcoming workshops in your local area are on the News page. If you would like more information, to make a provisional workshop booking or have suggestions about the workshop topics or venues please use the training contact form to let us know.

"I have to say that [the Ad Hoc Reports Day] was one of the best workshops I have ever attended. I found the subject quite fascinating - must get a life!! Sue and Peter were a good double act. It was entertaining, enlightening and the pace was just right. I was a little worried that it would be above my level but it was not so I now need to attend the advanced course some day."

Carole Graham
Isle of Man College

"Good idea to include a Technician in the Training Team. Enthusiastic and helpful Trainer!"

Val Bigford
City of Wolverhampton College

"Thanks for a great training day - well worth giving up one day of half term for!"

Pat Lowe
Oldbury Wells School

Training Workshops

Training workshops are held at various locations around the UK during the year. The forthcoming sessions are detailed on our support website:

"It was an excellent day- there was loads to learn, but you made it all so straightforward we all enjoyed it."

Alison Farrar
Broadmoor Hospital

"Invaluable course - a must for all librarians. Lunch was good and we had time to discuss with other Heritage users."

Diane Nunnerley
Sir John Talbot's Technology College

Heritage Reports Workshop

Who Should Attend?

New Heritage users, or those recently upgraded to Heritage
Librarians responsible for regularly producing library statistics
Heritage users who have limited knowledge of Heritage AdHoc Reports
Beginners and Intermediate level report writers
More experienced users who want to consolidate their existing knowledge before attending a ‘Heritage Advanced Report Writing’ workshop.

The aim of the day is to cover an introduction to UNDERSTANDING and CREATING your own reports.

This workshop is not aimed at advanced report writers (there is a separate course available for ‘Advanced Report Writing’). We will NOT be covering advanced and grouped reports in this workshop.

Course Content

An introduction to the theory of Command Line Report creation
The differences between Command Line and Banded Reports
Writing a Command Line Report
The Building Blocks: S.S.S (Selection, Showing, Sorting)
The Ornamentals
Copying an existing Banded Report – Overdue Letters
Guide to creating Command Line Reports
Knowledge consolidation exercises

Heritage Workshops - A History

Heritage training workshops were launched in 2002 to address the need for cost-effective training at suitable venues throughout the UK.

The first workshops were kindly hosted by Valerie and Trina at Sutton Park School, Dublin in February 2002. These were followed by further successful workshops at Manchester Metropolitan University, Regents College (London) and Reading Business School later that year.

The workshops delivered addressed a wide variety of topics which had been suggested by Heritage users themselves. The IS Oxford Training Department conducted extensive research to find out firstly whether workshop-style training would be popular with users and, secondly, the topics they would find most useful.

As a result all workshops have been extremely well-attended and supported by users. Indeed, they would not exist if users were not prepared to offer their own libraries as venues for these events.

This ‘Training Partnership’ offers excellent benefits for both IS Oxford and Heritage users. Free training is provided in return for a venue suitable for hosting workshops for 20 local librarians. This gives local Heritage librarians a chance to meet and learn together, as well as keeping the cost for workshop places to a minimum.

Workshops have proven to be so popular that we are now able to offer sessions on topics ranging from ‘Heritage Beginners’ to ‘Heritage Technical’ workshops for the more experienced user.

Past sessions have included:-
‘Heritage Beginners’
‘Heritage Intermediate Users’
‘Heritage Refresher Workshop’
‘Heritage Reports’
‘Heritage Serials Cataloguing’
‘Heritage Serials Management’
‘Heritage Technical Workshop’

If you are interested in attending workshops please check out the latest schedule on the News section of this website. All forthcoming workshops are also widely advertised on the Marvin list server and by email and post.

If you would be interested in hosting a Heritage workshop at your own library and would like to find out more about what is involved please contact Charlotte Knight-Benjafield (see below for details).

Find Out More?

If you would like to find out more about the Heritage training we offer please contact our Support Services Manager, Charlotte Knight-Benjafield on 01865 481041 or by email at . Alternatively you could complete the information request form to receive our latest training brochure and prices.