Case Study – Birranga College
Why is Accessit the perfect fit for a new library?
“I love that Accessit makes it a 24-hour library that the kids can access in their own time. Whether it’s searching for something on the web app or checking what they’ve got on loan, it’s just a very accessible system.”
Birranga College is a unique school. Having opened at the beginning of 2026, it currently teaches only Year 7 students — around 140 in total. This group is the school’s founding cohort, with a new year level to be introduced each year as the students move along their educational journeys.
Located in Clyde North, Birranga serves a diverse community and, from day one, has included a library for its students. Karys McEwen, the school’s Library Manager, works two days a week and has been responsible for establishing a brand-new library for this brand-new school.
Establishing a new library has become somewhat of a niche specialty for Karys, Birranga is the third brand-new school library she has helped establish, following similar work at Prahran High School and Richmond High School. That experience meant that when it came time to choose a library management system, she knew exactly what she was looking for.
“I chose Accessit because I’ve worked with it in different schools for about 10 years now and have had really good experiences with it.”
For Karys, a strong library management system was one of the first building blocks needed to get the library up and running. The blank slate of a brand-new library meant she had a completely empty catalogue to build as she saw fit.
“I think it’s obviously a bit of a dream to have an empty catalogue and to start from nothing. I’ve done it the other way, where you start at a new school and have a catalogue that’s messy and filled with decades-old records, so having a blank canvas is a rare opportunity.”
Accessit has been invaluable during this process, allowing for smooth and accurate cataloguing of new records. After time away from school libraries, Karys says the system’s intuitive design made returning to cataloguing feel natural and straightforward.
“With Accessit, it was like riding a bike… it just came back to me really quickly, and I think that’s because the system is just so intuitive and so user-friendly.”
Accessit’s reporting tools have also played an important role in helping to shape the collection. By showing what is being borrowed across titles, genres and formats, the system helps Karys build the collection around real student interest and feedback. It has even helped her create displays in the library based on the most-borrowed resources.
“Reporting has been really helpful to see what is being borrowed, specific titles, genres, formats, and then building on those collections based on usage reports and user feedback.”
While the library and the school itself are still growing, Karys has clear plans for the impact she would like it to have in the lives of her students. For many in the Birranga community, this is their first experience of a library setting, so building confidence and familiarity is just as important as building the collection itself.
“It’s just not something that has been prioritised in their family or even kind of understood, or maybe it’s just been overlooked a little bit.”
Karys hopes the library will help students develop the confidence and information literacy skills they will need as they continue through school and, eventually, into university. In that context, Accessit’s user-friendly design helps create a gentle introduction to library systems and digital research tools.
“A lot of them are going to go on to university and start to use more intense databases, scarier-looking systems. So I think Accessit is such a nice introduction for them to this world.”
One Accessit feature that has been especially helpful in maintaining the friendly and approachable atmosphere of the library is the customisable overdue letters, with Karys adjusting the language and tone to make sure that students are not put off from borrowing again.
“If you haven’t used libraries before, getting an email that is a little bit formal can be a little bit scary. I have softened those emails and changed the language so that it doesn’t come across as ‘you’re in trouble’, but as a friendly reminder.”
Just as importantly, Accessit has been easy to implement and maintain in a new-school environment where multiple systems are being established at once. Karys says the platform has required very little IT support, while integrations such as Borrower Sync and OverDrive (Sora) setup have been straightforward to manage.
Even as an Accessit veteran, Karys still occasionally needs support, but she says it has never felt like a problem because the team makes it easy to ask for help, no matter how small the question. Whether resolving day-to-day queries or helping fine-tune more specific setup requests, the Accessit team has been responsive, practical and easy to work with.
Above all else, Karys wants to create a space where students have agency and ownership, and where they feel empowered to go on their own journeys as learners and library users. Through easy-to-find reports and a user-friendly web app, Accessit will help make that possible as more students begin at the school each year.
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