INWOOD, WV, April 27, 2005 – Thompson School District (CO) will upgrade its 27 schools from a Sagebrush system to Library.Solution for Schools, TLC's centralized automation system for school districts.
According to Wendy Fothergill, Thompson Media Specialist and Project Coordinator, “TLC is a well-established company. Its strong background in public libraries has resulted in developments to the school product that are innovative and make them stand apart from other companies and products. I have seen several changes in the product since we began our search for a new system that have proven their desire to create a strong product for school libraries. They saw the need for changes in their customer support system as well as product changes such as the addition of a reading program searching function, and made those changes necessary for their school library customers.”
“We made the decision to seek a new automation system for several reasons. Our primary reason was to provide increased access for our students and staff,” Ms. Fothergill said. “We wanted to move to a system that would allow students and staff to search the library databases from any computer with Internet access, either at or away from school. Also, it was important to create the opportunity to allow our patrons to search all collections in the district instead of just their own school's collection. Finally, we wanted to consolidate from separate databases on servers in each school to a centralized database housed in a single location to streamline troubleshooting and technical support.”
Ms. Fothergill also noted that centralized automation will provide easy maintenance, while ensuring that the school district maintains cataloging integrity: “Centralized automation will also give us an advantage in technical support,” she said. “Instead of maintaining 27 databases on 27 servers at 27 different schools, we only need to maintain one large database at one location. A final advantage is the ability to maintain cleaner records, again resulting in greater access. Because all materials will be cataloged by a central cataloger, records will be clean and uniform.”
Thompson School District will also use TLC's KCweb, an OPAC interface for young students. “The kid's interface was very attractive to our elementary staff. Having a searching function that is kid-friendly in both searching features and the results generated after at search is a unique feature that we are very excited about using in our primary grades. This will allow us to begin teaching searching strategies earlier and will be a great benefit to our elementary students. Some other attractions included authority control, phonetic spelling capabilities, enhanced content including book reviews, and the overall aesthetic appearance of Library.Solution for Schools,” Ms. Fothergill said.
About Library.Solution for Schools
Library.Solution for Schools is a district-wide, centralized automation system that frees school media specialists from maintenance responsibilities. It provides school districts with a central database accessible via a multitude of interfaces, including KCweb children's interface, Circulation, Cataloging, Acquisitions, Bookings, Serials and a Web-based Public Access Catalog. Library.Solution for Schools is available on Windows or UNIX servers, and is accessible from both Windows and Macintosh computers. TLC's School Products Division also offers cataloging and authority control solutions, RFID, and AquaBrowser Library, all available for use with any school library automation.