Library Automation Systems

This is my first year working in a library and my first year having experience with an automation system.  I am in an elementary library and we use Alexandria as our system.  Alexandria was purchased and first used by our district about two years ago this spring.  Before that a program called LibraryPro was used.  I do remember when the switch was made there seemed to be a lot of headaches over glitches converting, especially since it was done during the school year with no time to plan for converting.  There was a period of a couple of weeks when books could not be checked out or in and it took a lot of time.  I have been very pleased with Alexandria for the most part, but maybe because I'm so new at it.  I am discovering new capabilities all the time. 

Alexandria is used for all circulation purposes, inventory, and as our OPAC for the students/staff. 

The circulation statistics I have found can be very useful.  It can show the most circulated books or rank books from most circulated to least.  This can be done for the complete collection (takes a lot of time) or for a section.  This is helpful when weeding.  It can also show circulation statistics for individual patrons so teachers can monitor how often and what books students are checking out. 

It has been very easy to manage patrons and items.  There are help bubbles that pop up when hovering over areas to know what they are if needed.  Adding and removing patrons is very simple.  Our school uses Infinite Campus for student management and student information can be easily taken from that and transferred into Alexandria so all 375+ students can be done at one time and not individually.  When adding new items, it searches for the item in the collection already and lets you add a copy easily if there is one.  If there is not, it finds and imports MARC records that are very reliable.  A picture of the cover is found quickly for almost all items. 

Alexandria also does a complete collection analysis that is set up through Follett/Titlewave, for all materials, not just those purchased from them. This is a great tool that is useful for purchasing/weeding/building your library. It provides a thorough review of your collection according to section or age or circulation statistics.

The reports are use most often during the year are viewing and printing overdue lists for the students and teachers and printing labels for new books or books needing replacement labels.  It took a little while to figure this out with putting the labels correctly in printer but now goes so smoothly.

I have seen a few things that I think could be improved upon.  When searching for a book using the OPAC, the students really must spell fairly accurately.  This can be a problem for elementary students.  The subject searches that are provided at the bottom are somewhat helpful but searching for a title or author can be tricky.  Also, Alexandria occasionally does updates.  These can take a while and the system will be down or when it comes up something isn't working like it used to.  However, customer service has been great!  Being new, I have relied on them frequently.  They have always answered when I've called and been very patient and helpful.  They also have online support that I've only used once but it was helpful. 

I think these systems should be evaluated every three to five years to see if they are meeting the needs of the users.  However, a downfall I've noticed with switching, and maybe it was just the way it was done previously, is that there are no circulation statistics previous to switching to this system.  When trying to do some weeding earlier this year, I could only go by the stats from the year and a half before.  If systems are changed, this should be something that is looked at.  I also think cost is a factor with schools having such tight budgets.  I know the Alexandria for my school alone is approximately $2000/year.  That's just one of five schools in my district. 

All this said, I am very thankful libraries are going the automated route.  It is much easier to maintain and the kids are using the OPAC that gives them a lot more information than a card catalog card ever did.  It also provides more circulation statistics than the previous method.