I became the LRC Manager at Wilmslow High School in April 2008 and inherited the Alice system. While I found this to be OK, it never really excited me and clearly the students felt the same. They were able to access the system from one Opac machine in the LRC but no where else. While some students did use this machine, staff never did. It seemed clear to me that with the school VLE becoming increasingly important, a web-based system was the only way to go.
I looked at systems offered by three different companies, and felt that Eclipse.Net was the most intuitive to use, looked the most appealing and would link in most efficiently with our VLE (Uniservity). I had full support from my line manager, head of Information Services Support, as he was also very impressed with the system.
We made the decision to convert during the summer holidays, and although there were a few teething problems when the system was first installed, the MLS helpdesk were able to solve these quickly by accessing our server remotely. I have been very impressed by the service from the helpdesk throughout and feel that this is one of the main selling points for the company. The training session we had was also excellent and reassured my assistant Lynn (who had been using Alice for ten years and catalogued all the resources in the first place) that we had made the right decision.
"I have been very impressed by the service from the helpdesk throughout and feel that this is one of the main selling points for the company."
Now that Eclipse.Net is up and running I will never look back! It is currently linked to the staff intranet page, and staff can view the catalogue by simply clicking on a link, making it much easier for them to plan lessons around what resources are available. The Deputy Head has commented on how impressive the home page looks and loves the fact that he cansee new resources that are available at a glance.
Students are so impressed that the system “knows who they are” and welcomes them when they log on. They love being able to check what resources they have on loan and write reviews. Many of the Year 7s were confident using the system without any instruction as the majority of Primary Schools in Cheshire use Junior Librarian. This seemed to helpmake their transition much smoother and reinforced the feeling for many of them that the LRC is a sanctuary at lunch and break times.
Students can currently access Eclipse.Net from anywhere within school and will shortly be able toaccess it from home as well when it is linked in with the school website. The English department are using the review-writing facility to run a “Reading is Cool” scheme for Year 9s, where the most improved readers will be rewarded. Next term I will be teaching Years 7-9 research skills in the LRC using SearchStar and the curriculum, which I am very excited about and hope to do the same shortly for the upper years in school.
I am really impressed with how easy the system is to use from a librarian’s perspective. The news items which look so professional are remarkably easy to create – as easy as a word document! The scheduling system cuts down on work from day to day tasks and reminders are run off so much more quickly than with Alice.
As we all know, technology is becoming increasingly important and as school librarians we have to move quickly to try and compete with popular (but not always effective!) tools such as Google and Wikipedia. I have found Eclispe.Net an effective and exciting way to do this. I can’t wait to see how the product will develop in the future!
Wilmslow High School and Specialist Sports College
Nicola Tully
We decided to invest in the MLS Connect module which I would highly recommend – when new students arrive at school they are automatically imported into Eclipse.Net from SIMS, and leavers are placed in the recycle bin. This is a huge time saver throughout the year, but especially in September. The reporting and views facilities are also excellent.