The new academic year has started, and new students are registering for a new set of courses and course modules. In addition you have a new set of books and resources to catalogue and make available to the students – so you are really busy. How can you off-load some of those tasks. SOme ideas are outlined below::
Activities for September
Automate User Record Updates With Your Student Management System – and let IT systems do the work!
Your student management system should provide all user records and do this seemlessly so you can be confident that user records are correct. Wonde is an excellent tool for this and is FREE, but if Wonde does not support your student management system, your LMS provider will provide utilities to automate this task.
Introduce Self-Service For Authorised Users
Avoid queues for the library desk. To automate self-service you just need:
- a tablet costing less than 200 pounds
- optionally a kiosk to put the tablet in – ( e.g. a Bouncepad costing around 500 pounds which ties the kiosk to a table top)
- optionally a barcode/QR code scanner to scan the barcodes of your books
The total cost of the above is less than £ 1000 and there are no annual recurring fees on any of the hardware.
The self-service software may be provided FREE with the library management system or a subscription charge may be made of around £ 500 per annum by some LMS vendors.
The above is very affordable and will give you so much time to do other tasks.
With all software designed and built in the UK, we can provide exceptional support and are rightly proud of our record.
Intelligent Use Of Barcodes and QR Codes
If you can avoid touching keyboards and do many tasks with just a scanner, you are likely to save yourself so much time and effort.
For example, if user barcodes are 10 characters or contain an alphanumeric pattern, while your item barcodes do not, your LMS system can do many circulation activities without touching any keyboard.
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