Case Study - Riva Primary

Riva Primary is in Western Australia with over 600 students ranging from kindergarten to year six. Riva is a new school, opening in January of 2021, and has a specific focus on supporting students with diverse needs. Cid Dare is the school’s sole librarian and has held the position since the school opened.

Accessit was chosen as the school’s library software before Cid was brought onboard. It was selected by Aaron, the school’s principal, after extensive research into the market and following his experience with previous systems. Cid herself has also had a lot of experience with other systems prior to her role at Riva and remarked that Accessit was a clear improvement on them, going as far as to describe her last system as “the Kmart version.”

While Cid had notable issues with her previous system, she remained hesitant about learning a new one, saying “I’m not as tech savvy as I probably should be, or could be.” What’s more there wasn’t much time for training before Cid had to jump right in. To ensure that students wouldn’t have to wait for anything, many resources were purchased ahead of time, meaning that Cid was cataloguing from day one.

Despite her initial hesitancy, Cid managed to pick up the new system in no time. Now, as a seasoned Accessit user, Cid has recommended the system to fellow librarians

“As I started using it more, I worked things out and went to online forums and that sort of thing.”

It was Accessit’s Cloud hosting capability that led the principal to selecting it as the school’s library system, a feature that has been extremely valuable for Cid and the other staff at Riva. Cid specifically enjoys the accessibility that it provides.

“You can use it wherever you are, all our staff have it on their phones.”

While its library houses mostly books, Riva also has a large range of additional resources located in different stores around the school, including in the Early Childhood, Literacy and Math Stores. Cloud hosting makes it easy for staff to check the availability of these items and even check these items in and out themselves.

“They just zap it in, zap it out. Take it, return it!”

All the resources for a particular learning area are located together, so staff can access without having to physically take items to the Library and allows staff an extra level of ease and responsibility over resources.

Cid also finds that, while still a work in progress, her school’s web app can be a great benefit to staff, with the book carousel being most popular as teachers can see which new resources have arrived.

Stock take has also become a lot easier for Cid.

“it’s easier to keep staff accountable if they know I’m stocktaking it. I can give staff a heads up that I will be stocking a particular store, so they can have resources back in time. Stocktake doesn’t have to happen in one day or location.”

Accessit’s reporting has also been valuable in expanding Cid’s inventory. Cid noted that, at students’ requests, Riva has a large Manga section, and despite this genre not being ’her jam’, Cid is able to easily print off a list of Manga in the collection, take that to her local store and ask for primary school appropriate recommendations.

With Riva being a new school, Accessit has been there from the very beginning, and despite her initial lack of familiarity with it, Cid found easy to dive into. Now that she and the school are up and running, she has made skillful use of its cloud hosting capability, in allowing staff to have easy information about and access to different resources. Furthermore, stocktaking and reporting have done wonders for up keeping and growing the school’s library catalogue, making sure the students of Riva have a library they love to visit.