1 Library management systems and their many functions

An online Library Management System (LMS) is central to the management of your library. LMSs are sophisticated tools which can help you carry out a range of important tasks such as creating reading lists, generating citations, cataloguing new resources and circulating books. They can also issue personalised reports to help you gain a deeper understanding of how your resources are used. For example, if your LMS has access to your school’s Management of Information System (MIS), such as SIMS, Arbor or iSAMS, it can drill the data to scrutinise your students’ borrowing habits and identify trends. This insight into the usage of your library resources can help you evaluate the impact of your collection management and identify areas for development. As a result, the data you gather can be used to great effect when writing reports or reviewing your performance, topics you will explore further in a later session.

The sophistication of your LMS is often dependent on its cost and, therefore, the budget you have available for it. Predictably, the more sophisticated the system the costlier it will be. It’s therefore useful to decide exactly what functions you want it to perform before investing. Watch the video below in which Sarah discusses this in more detail and suggests considerations you should take into account when deciding what you need from your LMS.

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SARAH:

I think how much you decide to spend on your library management system very much depends on the type of school you're working in. And it also depends on how you think it's going to be used. It might just be something that's for the library. But it might be something that actually has a wider remit, and other parts of the school might use it too-- for example, for textbook management. This all affects how much you're going to invest.

Generally, the more expensive a library management system is, the more functionality it's going to have. And you might decide that you want a system that's going to search across databases or allow students to search by a picture or an image rather than using words. You might be looking for it to create reading lists. And if you've got a sixth form, maybe you want that library management system to create bibliographies and citations for your students.

Some library management systems allow you to have multiple landing pages dashboards. And that's great, because you can actually advertise different things to different groups of borrowers. For example, you might have one for younger students, one for older students, or you might have one for the staff.

And other ones will actually incorporate things like videos of authors talking. And you could upload maybe a PDF, not just of articles, but one of the things I found really useful was to upload exemplar work. I’d get the teachers to give me an example, make it into a PDF, load it up, and then students had a model that they could work from for their project.

Some library management systems, once someone's logged in, will give them a private space. And here, they'll be able to compile a wish list or write a review about the books that they've written.

Another really great feature of some library management systems is that they can link to the school management system. And then-- I mean, in the old days, you'd have to manually update all your borrowers every time they moved up a year. No longer. Most of these systems now will do that automatically.

Some allow you to put up borrower photographs. And again, that's great. If you're doing issuing and you've got no idea who some of the people are in the class, you can just look at their photographs. But other people prefer to use maybe fingerprint recognition or an ID card.

If you're brave, or perhaps because you're not in the library all the time, you could set up a self-issuing kiosk. And you might allow students to make their own renewals or reservations as well.

Now, some systems allow you to make quite advanced reports. And these reports might include looking at how many people have tapped into a particular database or a particular reading list. And this is really useful for staff as well.

Certainly, I remember one member of staff who had set her class the objective of reading at least three books on a reading list for over the next-- they had to select something over the next three days. And she was able to actually look at the report and find out how many hits had been made on the reading list we'd collaborated on and set up together.

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LMSs can also perform federated searches, which means they can combine search results from multiple information sources. Furthermore, they can be connected to various other software packages, enabling you to perform tasks such as generating text messages and emails to students when running overdue reports. Similarly, if students have ID cards, they can be linked to your LMS, thereby removing the need to enter students’ details manually when issuing books.

The LMS should also be considered a whole school resource which can be accessed through the school website or intranet. By making it accessible outside the library, students can search its catalogue remotely, discover book classifications to identify where items are held in the library, view reading lists, and gain access to any resources that your library has subscriptions to. You may also wish to customise your LMS’s homepage, uploading useful documents and guides to help students with research, or sharing links to external websites such as referencing generators. These will not only help students in their studies and add value to your LMS, they will also encourage broader engagement with your library and its resources.

In this section, you have looked at some of the ways your LMS can play a key part in your role as librarian. In the next activity, you will think about the current functions your LMS has and the reports it can generate. You might then want to reflect on what has been discussed in this first section and video to see if there are any other new ways you think you could make use of your LMS.

In the next section you will be shown some of the different ways digital resources can be accessed and managed, as well as be given tips on how to encourage their usage.