Here's what our clients are saying about us.

Brighton Secondary school in South Australia has approximately 1250 students. We are a Special Music school and also Special Volleyball. We are an amalgamation of two schools one of which was on the Book Mark automation system and the other was on Dynix. We converted all records onto Dynix (135 Version) as Book Mark could not put both the Resource Centre and the Bookroom on to one Data base. (In South Australia students borrow all textbooks and we currently have approximately 50,000 text books for loan and 20,000 titles in the Resource centre). We also have AV equipment, Musical instruments, Sports and Concert band Uniforms on the data base. Dynix finally could not cope with the amount of work and needed to be upgraded.

The South Australian department of Education was investigating various automation systems at the time but for a variety of reasons seemed unable to come to a final decision. We were getting desperate as each 'phone call to Dynix was costing $350 dollars and the final straw came when they told me which button to press - over the 'phone and then charged me $350.

I went with another librarian to look at several automation systems in situ in Melbourne and Sydney. I then went to a FILMS demonstration here in Adelaide and decided that it could do everything all the others could do and for much less cost.

We converted to FILMS in March of 2001 - we had no conversion problem (that is to say the few minor ones could and were sorted out very quickly). We are able to have Administration terminals in several areas of the school - for example the Music centre where their specialised collection is housed, Student Reception where staff are able to look up any outstanding monies owed for books or uniforms. There is also one in the treasurers office. If I converted to Amlib (Sac’s eventual recommendation) it would cost me upwards of $7000 if I were to buy a licence for so many terminals.

We are learning all the time and keep finding things we are able to do on FILMS that we have never even thought of and we keep in close contact with other schools on the system and learn from each other. My latest find is how to put several titles on one barcode - excellent for video tapes, short story collections, titles of poems et cetera.
FILMS is updated regularly at no extra cost and the support we receive from them is excellent. We have had several customised reports made. We wanted a few extra things added to the overdue lists and within a very short space of time a program was written to accommodate our needs. These customised programs are downloaded via the internet and the instructions are faxed to us with very clear and straightforward instructions. If these reports need any modification the help desk are more than willing to re-do them until they are exactly what is wanted. A very personalised service that I do not believe is offered by other companies. The people who work on the help desk are so calm and patient even when asked the most trivial of questions.
I would recommend that FILMS be given serious consideration by any school looking for an efficient and progressive automated library system.
Jill Stevens, Brighton Secondary School, South Australia


See what other uses have to say about e-Library