August was a particularly crazy month at the Bindoon Library as we transitioned from Amlib, our old Library Management System (LMS) to our new one, Spydus. For anyone who has ever had a complete change of operating system, you’ll know just how hectic and downright terrifying that can be!
I’m happy to say that we’ve emerged out the other side and, apart from a handful of issues, it went relatively smoothly. That has been mostly due to the fact that we joined the Regional WA Library Consortium, which consists of 34 libraries across 20 Local Government Areas, run by the amazing team at Albany Public Library.
Operating systems are not cheap and it won’t shock anyone when I say that our little library doesn’t have an excessive budget. When we were given the definitive news that Amlib was no longer being supported, I began researching viable replacements. It was eye opening to discover how much a modern LMS costs, not only to run each year, but the upfront cost of migrating data across. I even looked into open-source software or piggybacking off a metro library as options in an attempt to stretch my budget.
Luckily, I wasn’t the only one who was searching for a replacement for Amlib. Many other libraries (mostly smaller, regional ones) were also looking, but they were in the same predicament – we simply couldn’t afford a modern LMS by ourselves.
In rode Albany Public Library on their white steed. Albany had been successfully running the Southern WA Library Consortium for some years and were big proponents of ‘the more the merrier’. They offered the soon-to-be-LMS-less libraries the opportunity to join their ranks and in doing so, we could take advantage of a bulk migration deal to lesson the costs. It was an offer too good to pass up and so we jumped at the chance, and they rebranded to include the entirety of regional WA.
The Albany Team have been fantastic from the very beginning. We’ve been included every step of the way, have had numerous training sessions, received one-on-one support, and they were on site on our Go Live day to make sure everything ran smoothly.
There have been some teething issues, as with any system swap, mostly to do with our eResources, but overall it went better than I expected. We have a lovely OPAC now (Online Public Access Catalogue) so members can search our catalogue from the comfort of their own homes, make requests, and renew their books. We have ongoing, dedicated support from the team in Albany, and our new system will make our end of year statistical process a breeze compared to how it used to be (Amlib = stone, stats = blood, you get the picture).
I hope our members will come to love Spydus as much as I do.
