Kamo High School

When Alex Wallace, Manager of Digital Fluency, was looking to update the library system at Kamo High School, he wanted two things: a modern, cloud-based system that would take care of itself; and a system that would keep in tune with the digital fluency values of the school.

A modern, cloud-based solution

Alex Wallace, Manager of Digital Fluency for Kamo High School describes their school library as a “multimedia hub housing a variety of formats to access, use and gain information. The purpose of the library is for open access to the community of users it serves and to work alongside students to develop a love of reading and life-long learning.”

When researching new library management systems, Alex looked for a modern, reliable system wouldn’t be a drain on IT time, “We wanted to move to a cloud-based system to replace our old unsupported software that required local network backups and so on,” says Alex.

Digitally fluent learners

As well as a cloud-based solution, Alex looked for a system that could keep up with a modern learning environment. The teachers at Kamo High School encourage their students to become digitally fluent learners. According to Alex, a digitally fluent student, “knows where and how to find information quickly, and can critique the relevancy and accuracy of information being accessed.”

Alex explains, “Today, students are computer literate but do not know how to research effectively to gain the specific, reliable, credible information they require for school subjects. A large majority have no idea about keyword searching away from Google and Wikipedia. Students want what is readily available to them, and the up-to-the-minute trends; otherwise, they do not seem interested.”

Alex notes that with more and more distractions, attention spans are reducing and the media/software/technologies that interest students are those that are immediately engaging and entertaining. “Keeping up with this is an ongoing issue and process to keep them interested and learning,” says Alex.

Accessit Library directly supports these digital goals, providing students with an engaging, interactive Web App that houses all Kamo High School’s resources, whether digital or physical. Students can access credible, curated content related to any topic through Accessit’s One Search, and can generate citations at the drop of a hat, making referencing so much easier.

Responsive support

From an IT perspective, a smooth system transition, stability of software and superb support were all major drawcards. “The tech support from Accessit and our local IT provider made the transition seamless and problem free. They worked very together well,” says Alex.

“Accessit is amazingly easy to use. The boxes with different menus in the Management App enhance the accessibility of the functions. I enjoy using the system and we have reduced the Kamo High School helpdesk technical time for system maintenance, updates and backups. The fast response when using phone contact to resolve any issues or queries has been a big plus. The screen-sharing approach has saved the librarian many hours when trying to search and read manuals for small queries,” says Alex.

“We have found Accessit to be a reliable and robust cloud-based software system that’s user-friendly and well supported from a technical perspective. We highly recommend Accessit to other school libraries. We love Accessit and think the support is fabulous.”

In addition to praising the Accessit Library Customer Support team, Jenny is also a self-proclaimed ‘big advocate of Accessit Library’, hoping to have all schools within their trust using Accessit Library.

There are two schools who have just come into our academy trust, and one has already been persuaded to change their existing Library Management System. I’m also hoping to visit one of the other schools in the next couple of months too.

I think being on the same library management system will be really helpful in terms of consistency between students who come in from feeder schools and are already familiar with how to search the WebApp. The Librarian in one of our feeder schools is also really excited about using the WebApp to promote resources, reading schemes and other literacy based activities.