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Sue Dowdell wrote: >Our district is changing its Student Information Software to AdministratorsPlus by >Rediker. Our tech coordinator asked me about their companion library software, >Concourse, and I am looking for information from those of you who use it or have >seen it. What do you like about it? What are the pitfalls? I would love to look at >Destiny or Alexandria, but I don't think that will be an option unless I gather >some information. Please help. Thank you. Sue Dowdell > Since several people have wondered about various library automation software programs, I thought I'd share what we have done over the past year. We're currently using Athena, and have decided to switch to something else BEFORE we are forced to do so. We have only two libraries for our District, and since we're both on the same campus, it is easy for the two of us to work together. I handled getting information and scheduling initial demonstrations; Kathy scheduled the on-site visits. We heard from six different companies: Alexandria, Atrium, Destiny, Koha, L4U, and Surpass. Atrium has a local rep, so he did a live demo. The others did on-line demos. All six products were big improvements over Athena. If anyone from an automation company is monitoring this list, I have to say that we were greatly impressed by how far the industry has come in the past few years. Features I hadn't even thought of are standard. Kathy and I developed a list of questions we wanted answered, and I prepared a chart with the six products and our questions. If someone presented an issue that we hadn't thought of I added it to the chart, and any vendors that had already done a demo for us were asked about that point. Eventually we got to where we could make an intelligent decision. Cost is always a factor, but the initial cost isn't the only thing to consider, so I worked out not only what it would cost us to make the switch from Athena to each of the six, but also what it would cost us over a 10-year period (the time we've had Athena). Surprisingly, that number didn't vary as much as the initial purchase price did. We then tried to narrow the six down to three, and we hoped to then talk to people who were using those three products about their experiences. The four products in the middle of the 10-year cost price bracket were all pretty close. The most expensive (Destiny) and least expensive (L4U) were quite a bit off from the other four, so we decided to eliminate them from further consideration. More on that later. Alexandria and Koha were the two strongest contenders. Atrium and Surpass really didn't seem to have anything that stood out for us. At first, we were going to eliminate both of them, and just focus on Alexandria and Koha. We decided, though, that since we had originally said we would cut the field down to three finalists, and select one of those three, that we ought to stick with that. We kept Atrium in just because they had a local rep. Koha is just getting into the school market, although they have been a strong contender in other library settings, and we thought the administration might not be willing to pay for the two of us going to Alaska just to see a library program. We were able to see Alexandria in operation before everyone went away for the summer. We'll be scheduling a visit for Atrium shortly. Once that visit has been made, Kathy and I will decide which one of the three we will recommend to the Board. The plan is that the actual conversion will be done after school is over in May. Aside from actually seeing how it works in the real world, we also wanted to know about customer service. Why did we drop Destiny and L4U? Destiny is a wonderful system, and has some add-ons that are just fantastic. Unfortunately, Follett thinks very highly of it (probably because it cost so much to develop) and it is simply too expensive for us. L4U, on the other hand, was so much less expensive, that we wondered if they have actually put the money into the product that is really needed, and whether they are putting the money into it to improve it. From what we saw, L4U would certainly work at least as well as Athena. It might well be a good choice for a school that needs to buy the absolute cheapest of everything. I hope our experience is helpful to others. If you would like to know more, please feel free to email me directly. -- David Lininger, kb0zke, MS/HS librarian Hickory County R-1 Schools Urbana, MO 65767 417-993-4226 tss003 at tnp dot more dot net -------------------------------------------------------------------- Please note: All LM_NET postings are protected by copyright law. 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