Introduction
Many libraries have dedicated volunteers that play important roles in day-to-day operations. Your integrated library system can make or break the volunteer experience.
User Friendliness
Is your ILS easy to navigate? Are volunteers easily able to find items for patrons in the administrative module and the online catalog? Can the person at the circulation desk check the status of a patron’s items on hold quickly and easily? Volunteers that experience frustration time and time again with your ILS may take their time and talents elsewhere.
Who is affected and what are their needs?
Talking to other staff, teachers, administrators, and IT staff about their needs and expectations is an important step in evaluating an ILS. You can not only help meet the technical requirements of other stakeholders, but also gain support from those affected by your choice.
Customized Roles
The ability to give volunteers permission to do the work they need to do in your ILS will prevent frustration and always having to call upon a staff member for assistance. Do you want volunteers to be able to renew items or override blocks? Can another volunteer catalog items?
On the other hand, what don’t you want your volunteers to access or do? Do you want to have only regular staff handle cataloging, entering new patron accounts, or creating loan rules? An ILS that gives you the power to allow or restrict roles from different functions, such as Surpass Cloud, gives the flexibility needed to make these decisions.
Support
If no staff are available to answer a volunteer’s question, is help easy to access, such as with Surpass Cloud’s “Help With this Page” button? Does the documentation include links to videos, screenshots, and explanations of how to do things? Can your volunteers contact the Support staff easily? These are some things to keep in mind when choosing an ILS.
Backups and Updates
If your IT people are volunteers, you will want to take into consideration how database backups and maintenance will be handled. A cloud-based system like Surpass Cloud automatically backs up data and updates with no interruption in service—freeing your volunteers up for other tasks.
Conclusion
Keeping the needs of library volunteers in mind when choosing an ILS is important. An ILS that makes it easy to get work done and to help patrons makes volunteers much more likely to stay with the library. Tailoring the user roles to ensure that each role can access the functions that are needed, while not accessing other features, give the staff the flexibility to let helpers do what they do best.
About Surpass
Surpass Cloud is the easy-to-use, cloud-based library management system for libraries of all types and sizes. Whether you’re a school, church, museum, business, or any other organization with resources to lend, Surpass is likely a good fit for you. We pride ourselves on being affordable and flexible, with an expert support team ready to help you at a moment’s notice.
Schedule a free demo to see Surpass in action.
