Insights From Our Customers

With the help of Accessit Library managing your school library becomes a seamless, efficient, and an integrated experience. With Accessit taking care of the heavy lifting, you can effortlessly extend and embed the library as a whole school resource. Let’s dive into some best practice tips from top users, showcasing how you can get your entire school utilising the library from anywhere.

Bridget Hamlet describes Accessit’s Quick Lists function as a “game changer.” At Rushey Mead, they have a reward system where students earn passport points for reading books from specific lists. Bridget has collaborated with various departments across the school to create easily accessible reading lists for students.

“The History department are very good at creating historical fiction reading lists and rewarding pupils with badges and other goodies. I’ve trained the teachers on how to create a list on the library website and then use the ‘Send to Librarian’ function. When I receive a notification, I can quickly create the list making it accessible on the library website. When a student comes in with some recommendations from their history teacher I can say, yes, those books are on Mrs Henson’s list, and they can then see the list of books and the availability of each item on the library website.”

Bridget also appreciates the simplicity and time-saving features of Accessit, allowing her to focus more on important tasks. For instance, creating a dedicated space in the library for students new to the English language.

“Students were coming into the library, and I was going to lots of different places to look for specific books, so I thought let’s put them all in the same area. Using the Quick Scan function, alongside Global replace I was able to change the classification of the books quickly. I was then able to append new keywords to each of the titles and the whole process was so fast and convenient.”

Lesley Martin at St. George’s Munich has taken Accessit’s Visual Search feature and customised it to support a Year 7 independent research project led by the Science Faculty.

“I’ve renamed Visual Search ‘Subject Resources’ and have added subjects for each year group across the school, alongside the topics that they study. Because of the flexibility of Accessit I’ve been able to include books, YouTube videos, websites, and PDFs – anything I can find to support the topic. It’s a simple way of students being able to find the information relevant to that topic easily.”

This is just one way that Accessit’s Visual Search can be customised to better fit your school. See more examples here.

At a different St. George’s School in Edinburgh, Librarian Chloe Elder utilizes Accessit to manage overdue reminders without being the “bad guy.”

“We use the Automated Overdues function on Accessit, so I don’t feel like I’m personally chasing students with overdue reminders. They get an automated email every week and we have also set up that their registration teacher gets an automated email every Monday morning at 8:00 am. It means I don’t need to be in school at 8:00 am to send the notice but it means registration teachers can remind students first thing.”

Chloe also uses Accessit’s Reporting features to track the impact of new library initiatives.

“We like to track our circulation when we add a new initiative or change something around in one of our libraries. I can compare year on year on whether there was in increase in circulation because of the change.We also use specific reports to track individual students who are not borrowing books and are not engaging in library lessons. We can then track the success or failure of the targeted support we have provided those students.”

Accessit’s reporting capabilities allow Nikki Heath to make impactful personalised reading recommendations.

“I make personalised reading recommendations for our Year 7s. I wanted to know how effective these were, so I ran a report on the ‘Most Popular list’ before and after the initiative started. The report allowed me to see that there was a much broader range and variety of books being read because of the recommendations.

The report also allowed me to see how many students are borrowing our reading challenge books. Even if not all students complete the challenge, we can still see how often the books are going out on loan.”

From creating collaborative reading lists to streamlining overdue reminders and utilizing detailed reporting features, Accessit Library supports librarians in saving time and engaging students more effectively. By integrating these best practices, you can transform your library into a valuable resource for the entire school. For more information on Accessit Library and how it can benefit your institution, feel free to reach out to us.