Oldham Sixth Form College is widely regarded as one of the best sixth form colleges in the country. It was awarded Beacon status in 2005, and achieved six Grade 1's in its April 2008 Ofsted inspection, being described by the Inspectors as "an outstanding college".

What range of media do you hold in your library? Is it all catalogued on Heritage?

Books, journals, videos, DVDs, laptops, voice recorders – all catalogued. Also all resources within College are catalogued and issued through Heritage – all textbooks and all equipment.

Can you remember where you first heard about Heritage? Did you look at our website before contacting us?

Been using Heritage since 1994 – before the internet!!! Can’t remember where we heard about you, possible from LA Record advert?

Do you remember how many library management systems you looked closely at?

Looked at 4 systems in depth, ALS (the system we had but wanted to upgrade), Sims, Genesis & Heritage. (Found our systems overview & recommendations report yesterday! First Heritage demo was on 10th March 1994!

What were you looking for in a library management system? What were your priorities?

The system we were using was run by the public library so if we wanted to change anything they had to do it, but only when the system was taken down for maintenance – we wanted to be able to define our own circulation rules, readers, reports – everything! We wanted flexibility, ease of use and customisability.

Why did you choose Heritage over the other systems you were considering?

Other systems were over-complicated, didn’t do everything we wanted and much more expensive.

What are your overall impressions of ISOxford staff (this includes Sales, Training and Support staff, plus any Developers you may have dealt with)?

All the staff are professional, knowledgeable, friendly.

How did the initial installation process of Heritage go? Did you find it straightforward?

Very smoothly – did it all ourselves, and set it up without any training. Then employed 4 students to catalogue everything as a data transfer couldn’t be done because of the way our data was stored in the old system.

What did you think of the Heritage training?

I’ve been to Oxford 4 times for training and each time it has been a worthwhile trip. I’ve gained a lot of useful knowledge, particularly on the technical side, which on many occasions has made my job a lot easier and stopped the need for a call to support service.

How have you found the support service from ISstaff?

Excellent! Always prompt to reply with a solution to whatever problem I’ve encountered.

Have you used the support website? How useful did you find it?

Used it quite a lot, usually for helpsheets.

Are you a member of Marvin, our list server? Do you find Marvin a useful service?

Yes, it’s useful to see what other problems other users may be having and the solution, sometimes before you’ve even encountered them. Also, Heritage is used in different ways in different institutions, so have got some good ideas of how I could develop Heritage from Marvin.

How has Heritage improved the day-to-day running of the library and services offered to your users?

We couldn’t run without it after 15 years of using it!!! In fact, the college couldn’t manage without it as it is used by every curriculum dept to manage their own book stock.

What are your favourite features in Heritage?

We love the bookings module, it has made it so much easier to see availability of PC areas and meeting rooms throughout the college.  Here’s my reply to a Marvin question about the module earlier this year:

We have been using the advance bookings module very successfully for the last 2 academic years and have done 13000+ bookings. We use it to book equipment (from the LRC and our IT Department), classes into the LRC and satellite study areas, meeting rooms for departments and management team, and lecture rooms for large group presentations. Prior to having the bookings module there were separate paper-based systems for all of these, with each system with a different person and in a different location. Mistakes were often made when equipment was booked for use in a room which hadn’t been booked and was in use by someone else etc. Merging all the bookings into one system and using the Heritage Bookings module has made a huge difference as there is now only one contact for all bookings whether it is equipment, rooms or both. In the last college staff satisfaction survey 95% of staff were ”very satisfied” with the new booking system.

We’ve really liked the developments with Heritage Online, from its early days as the “WebOPAC” to the current version. We’ve found student usage has increased since version 3.3 as it now looks more like an internet site, especially with the book covers. Can’t wait for the next release after the sneak preview!

Catalogue Groups is another favourite of mine as I’ve used them to create reading lists for each module topic for many of our A level courses and have placed a link on their VLE pages which takes them directly to the list on Heritage Online. This has increased usage of many books that otherwise wouldn’t have been used.

Have you linked Heritage to any other systems in your institution, such as Moodle, Sharepoint, Aquabrowser, MyPC, Txtools, Screenreader software, a management information system or similar? If so, any comments about the integration process or success of the integration?

Not yet – have a link on Moodle to Heritage Online, but not done the moodle block. Also the College is currently looking at MyPC and Txtools, which we would definitely integrate with Heritage.

Do you have any other comments you would like to make about ISOxford or Heritage? Would you recommend it/us to other libraries?

I can’t speak highly enough of Heritage and the ISOxford team. They are always polite, courteous, helpful, friendly, and know what they’re talking about. I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending it to other libraries, and have done several times.

Oldham Sixth Form College have been using Heritage since 1994. They currently have nine additional full access licences, Heritage Online (Large Schools), the Serials Management Module, Advanced Bookings Module, Fines Module, Reader Import Module and the Quickcat Online Module.