HERITAGE - LIBRARY MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

With nearly 30,000 students, Newcastle College is the largest college in the north east. One of only nineteen colleges in the UK to be awarded Beacon status, they received a Grade One OFSTED Inspection in July 2008. Newcastle College has one of the largest Library Services in further education in the UK, comprising a main library and two branches.

Q. What range of media do you hold in your library? Is it all catalogued on Heritage?

The full gamut, from books, journals, DVDs, CDs, videos, cassettes, slides, e-resources, e-books and e-journals and yes all of it is on Heritage.

Q. Can you remember where you first heard about Heritage? Did you look at our website before contacting us?

A colleague had used it and liked it , the website and we attended a CILIP showcase of systems.

Q. Do you remember how many library management systems you looked closely at?

All the main suppliers and had demos from at least 6-8

Q. What were you looking for in a library management system? What were your priorities?

Ease of use, affordability, a web OPAC, a system that made sense to the end user.

Q. Why did you choose Heritage over the other systems you were considering?

An excellent demonstration, modules such as HeritageConnect that made life so much easier and the price. The fact that we were given a demo version to play with. Also it had a simplicity that some of the web based systems seemed to have lost but at the same time it had all the functionality that we needed. Especially acquisitions and circulation.

Q. What are your overall impressions of ISOxford staff (this includes Sales, Training and Support staff, plus any Developers you may have dealt with)?

All the staff have been helpful. Occasionally some of the helpdesk staff sound a little more enthused but I understand that they are busy. All major problems that we have had have been dealt with quickly and expertly. Rob Perkins has been a huge help. Even with Aquabrowser the help has been excellent.

Q. What did you think of the Heritage training?

Parts were excellent – the journals training for instance. But all staff do not need to know everything. If the client stipulates this group need circulation training then they do not need to go through cataloguing and reports.

Q. How have you found the support service from ISstaff?

Good fairly prompt in response and polite enough not to make you feel too stupid when you have messed up.

Q. Are you a member of Marvin, our list server? Do you find Marvin a useful service?

Yes and it is useful just to see that other people are having similar problems. I worry that users take “work rounds” as an answer rather than contacting supprt.

Q. How has Heritage improved the day-to-day running of the library and services offered to your users?

Heritage Connect has helped our customers and staff have a better first experience of their initial visit to the library. Serials and acquisitions have made those areas much easier to work with than our previous system. The reports are a particular favourite of mine and we use them extensively to extract information from the system which informs some of our management decisions.

Q. What are your favourite features in Heritage?

Reports, web opac, stocktake module.

Q. Have you got any suggestions for features that aren’t presently available in Heritage that you would like to see?

Q. Have you linked Heritage to any other systems in your institution, such as Moodle, Sharepoint, Aquabrowser, MyPC, Txtools, Screenreader software, a management information system or similar? If so, any comments about the integration process or success of the integration?

Yes, we have a link in Blackboard to Heritage Online and we also have Aquabrowser on top of our OPAC. The integration took some time but that was simply because Aquabrowser had not dealt with Heritage before.

Q. Do you have any other comments you would like to make about ISOxford or Heritage? Would you recommend it/us to other libraries?

I would recommend the system to other libraries.

Newcastle College have been using Heritage since 2007. They currently have twenty additional full access licences, the Fines Module, the Heritage Connect Module, the Serials Management Module (including Acquisitions), the Quickcat Online Module, the Server Performance Pack and Heritage Online (Large).