High School Library OPAC

[L.E. Spear]

I have been fighting with our OPAC company (Companion Corp Alexandria) over their new version 6 software which is too elementary school oriented and flawed to be of any use.

Does anyone have suggestion on an economical OPAC for high school library use. I think I'm just going to give up and find another company. I just need suggestions

[Julie Udy]

We use Booksystems/Atriuum. It was fairly inexpensive. We have the ezCat program too to download Marc records. Lots of layers to learn. I just use the basics for what I need to do. The elementary librarian doesn't like it that well, but it has come along way since we switched to it in 2001. It is windows based. There is a yearly fee of about 1000.00 per building (comparable to other systems). We couldn't get Alexandria to come to our town to do a demo so we didn't even look at them. We use to have Dynix that was going to charge us an arm and a leg every 5 years to get a new server and upgrade. We chose not to fall into that trap again.

[Mary A. Powers]

L.E.:
Our school (both the elementary and my high school library) have been using Alexandria v.5.5.6 for about two years and it seems okay. In fact, all four school libraries in our district are using Alexandria. However, I'm a tad nervous about updating to version 6.0.1 after your comment. Can you reply/elaborate with a bit more detail about the flaws of 6.0? Did you already switch to another vendor? Not many users by schools here in Vermont.!

[L.E. Spear]

FAIR WARNING: do not under any circumstance let Alexandria con you into upgrading to their new system. It does not work. The catalogue searches are incomplete, features in older version have been deleted for no reason and the only real upgrade is the addition of advertising for Capstone Books, Amazon and other vendors. In an effort, I think, to confuse librarians and trick them into buying more materials, the Alexandria OPAC will refuse to find records known to exist in the catalogue and then direct the user to Amazon to buy it.

By the way, tech support is notoriously difficult to deal with. It took four hours, two network managers and me to convince them that their system didn't work. They will fob off any problems by claiming it is a problem with the school's network system. It isn't the network, it is faulty database development.

[Suzanne Dix]

I've been doing a lot of research into this as well. Rediker Products has Atrium and Concourse (Concourse being the cheaper option) look good but I am in love with Follett's Destiny. Looks amazing. Currently we are with Follett using Circ Plus and Catalog Plus - very basic platform and under $1000 for 2 databases and support.

[Samantha David]

We are a charter school that was once public under East Baton Rouge Parish. EBR used Follet's Destiny. When I was hired, it was a new program for me, but I learned how to use it quickly and easily. So, when administration decided to purchased their own system, I stuck with it and haven't had any complications. I must insist on purchasing the Maintenance Agreement, because you know how technology can be at times. However, I haven't had to use it since I've been here.