Oliver v5 Reviews

I helped to implement Oliver V5 in a community library which is designed to meet different needs of learners in the community. These are mainly primary school going children. Oliver 5's user-friendly interface connects the learners to streaming sites that reflects their age, ability, skills and culture

Oliver V5 has features that motivate children to use the library resources. We customised the interface to display appealing pictures of the books that the learners like. In so doing, the Learns begin to engage with the books.

We use the OPAC as a tool to communicate both parent and learners and promote the available services. The dynamic features in Oliver V5 has enabled us to constantly update and change the contents of OPAC in line with current events and festivals such as Christmas, Easter and Eid.

As a cloud-based application, Oliver V5 has helped the community library to do away with hardware and software installation, security, backup and upgrades.

Oliver V5 brings fun to the whole process of knowledge acquisition. Learners access the community library's collection using s hand held mobile devices, on top of the conventional PC.

With Oliver V5, reporting has been so easy. The a available templates enable us to create effective charts, graphs and tables that I form stakeholders on the extent of usage of the library along with the impact of the same on intellectual development of the learners.

I wish Oliver V5 connects learners to more websites that have local content for the community children.

I particularly like three aspects of Oliver. First, I like its reliability, which I think is in large part due to its robust, platform-independent, browser-based management interface. In two years of using Oliver I’ve had only one occasion of downtime, which lasted all of thirty minutes. I cannot not say the same of the previous system at my school.

Second, I like Oliver because it's very user-friendly. Students and teachers. who won't hesitate to complain when something is frustrating them, frequently comment favourably on Oliver's Amazon-style interface. They they find it appealing and easy to use, whether they're searching for books or online resources on LearnPath (Oliver's optional content curation platform).

Third, I like Oliver because its support team is so responsive; I cannot over-empathise how important this is. Everyone I've contacted, without exception, has demonstrated a clear understanding of how school libraries work, the pressures I’m under and the importance of fixing any problems as quickly as possible. Staff quickly respond to queries, whether by phone or email (I rarely have to wait for a call back, while almost all emails are answered within 30 minutes), they fix most problems on the spot, and they are very willing to take on board ideas for developing the software.

Some areas of the management interface are cluttered, the layout of some functions could be better and one or two housekeeping processes are - for me - a little illogical. Such issues are usually the consequence of a new feature being added but not entirely integrated with an older function it's intended to complement.
For example, the latest version of Oliver offers management users the option of creating customised emails for circulation notices, but it doesn't entirely replace the older system of creating and scheduling emails and consequently is unnecessarily complex and frustrating to use.

I also don't like having to sort through so many options for reports when only one or two of them are relevant to me; I'd appreciate more options for customisation in this area, along with several others.

I fail to understand why the system sends students and staff overdue notices during school holidays when it's impossible for them to return books - something that annoys both me and the teachers and students receiving the emails; the only way of stopping it doing so is to turn off the automatic overdue emails altogether, which shouldn't be necessary.

These are, however, minor niggles when set against the strength of the system overall.

Oliver is a comprehensive library database software that specifically caters for our school needs by offering excellent functionality and continual upgrades that address issues that sometimes arise.

Oliver is very expensive compared to the local New Zealand alternative - Accessit .

Oliver is like a turbo-charged version of Alice, our previous operating system. It is very user friendly and intuitive, and our students love being able to track the books they have borrowed and want to borrow in the future and write book reviews.

There were a few glitches in the label printing, however these were very competently sorted out by the amazing Help Desk staff, who went above and beyond to get the issue sorted out.

I mostly like that it is so easy to use. Most areas I can work out how to do what I need to do. If I can't work it out and contact softlink, they always assist with working out the problem. I find that they are always very quick with replying to my emails and assistance is very quickly provided.

This is not so much a problem with the software, but I haven't worked out how to email parents automatically from within the overdue screen.

Software is logical to use and there are great Help functions available that will step you through what you need to do to upskill or solve a problem. Support is always available and promptly. The interface of Oliver is attractive and can be customised. Also easy for staff and students to use. For more complex cataloguing, there is more than adequate features to accommodate original cataloguing.

Some of the higher levels of features such as Acquisitions are a little trickier to master.

I have always found that Softlink library software (and I have used practically all of their products) are straight forward and think like a librarian. I like the colourful, visual options and the easy navigation forclients.

I initially had trouble adding sliders or carousels but then the support team helped me out. I have also used the fingerprint identification since it first came out but the company which produces that software hasn't had great support over the last three years.

Easy for students to use and can be used across multiple school campuses. Being able to have Oliver and Orbit to cater to different age groups makes it a viable option for K - 12 schools. The ability for students to search and filter allows them to learn important information literacy skills in a meaningful way as they search for resources.

Having multiple campus libraries makes it difficult for our students to only see or reserve the items within their own library.

24/7 access for our customers, email alerts and notices, customer support

Not always intuitive to use and some reporting not entirely what you want, stock taking modules

Oliver v5 is very easy to use. Keeping track of library items is no problem. There are lots of reports to choose from. The customer support is brilliant; they are so helpful and always get to the bottom of any infrequent problems that arise, no matter how big or small.

I don't think there's anything to dislike.

Oliver v5 is a reliable and accurate product that allows us to run our school library in an efficient manner. I love the support from the Softlink team. They are always readily available for help and to answer any questions I might have.

Sometimes the back-end set up requires further knowledge and support.

functionality, quick and helpful technical support

development requests can be slow to be created