Richmond-Upper Clarence Regional Library, winners of the 2023 Knosys Libero Diversity and Inclusion award, recently partnered with the Evans Head Living Museum. Their collaboration involved integrating the museum’s book collection into their library’s catalogue. This initiative aims to enhance visibility and strengthen the connection between the library and the local community museum.
Enhancing the Member Experience
We asked Ngarie Macqueen, Library Co-Ordinator at Richmond-Upper Clarence Regional Library to share how the award-winning enhancements improved the member experience.
“The team reimagined how MARC tags can be used to better identify authors in their collection, to both highlight the information and make it more discoverable. Additional information about each author/creator, e.g., nationality and cultural information can be added to the MARC records for each item within the catalogue. This includes information about connection to specific First Nations groups”, says Ngarie.
“We had enquiries for specific books on subjects we didn’t have in our collection previously and because they were discoverable in a search within our library’s catalogue, we were able to refer the member to the museum and help the library member get to the resource they wanted”.
‘This builds trust with our members and an extra connection to our
Ngarie Macqueen, Richmond-Upper Clarence Regional Library
community which benefits us all‘.
Enhancing Library Operations with Libero 6
To gain a comprehensive understanding of the library’s experience with the Libero library management system, we went on to ask Ngarie about the software’s importance for successful operation, their transition to the cloud, and the most valuable features that have streamlined their operations and elevated the member experience.
How important is the software to the successful operations of your library?
The most important goal for any library is to always have our community’s needs in mind. It’s vitally important that the library management software supports both the staff and the community to, as easily and efficiently as possible, discover and therefore access the items they need or want.
How would you describe the transition to cloud with Libero 6?
The biggest gain for our library service with moving to the cloud is that we gain precious time. In not needing to prioritise and fit in upgrades around other workflow and tasks, we can spend our time on updating settings and functionality to ensure the software meets the library’s needs.
What Libero features and functionality that are most valuable to your library?
- SDI emails – some of our team use their branch’s email address for some of their elderly members which enables the team to reserve newly released content that these members like to borrow. This saves time for these members and makes it easier for the team to provide what the members are looking for.
- MARC order functionality saves us so much time importing orders into the system. Such a small thing but makes life so much easier – including being able to put suggested items directly on reserve for members as the order is imported.
- The addition of the colours to the loans screen makes it so much easier for team members to differentiate between items on loan to members.
- Functionality of the Interlibrary Loan module – our team is happy with the functionality of the module and how it meets the needs for our interlibrary loan service.
Experience with the Libero Support Team
How would you describe your experience with our support team?
The Libero support team respond to requests with detailed information, including visuals which I personally appreciate, as well as responding with simple language that helps us understand what we need to action.
‘The support team are also kind and caring in
Ngarie Macqueen, Richmond-Upper Clarence Regional Library
their approach which is very much appreciated’.
About Richmond Upper Clarence Regional Library
Richmond-Upper Clarence Regional Library (RUCRL) has five libraries serving the Richmond Valley and Kyogle Council areas. As well as lending books, magazines, audio books, DVDs and CDs, there is an eLibrary with thousands of items. The library’s collection includes resources for all ages, and includes formats such as standard print, large print, dyslexic print, braille, audiobooks, magazines, newspapers, and graphic novels. They run programs and events for all ages which are conducted inside the branches as well as many educational centres within the region. They are a long-time valued customer of Libero and have been a customer since 1992. They moved to Libero Cloud in 2019.
Website: https://richmondvalley.nsw.gov.au/community-services/libraries-2/
Catalogue: https://richmondvalley.libero.com.au/libero/WebOpac.cls