Tsukuba International School

Tsukuba International School is a private, non-profit school for children aged 3-18 in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan. As a small school of around 260 students, they needed an affordable, flexible library management system that could cater for all ages, and offered superb around-the-clock support.

Making an informed decision

Shaney Crawford was at Tsukuba International School for three years before she became Principal in 2011. As a trained librarian, Shaney knew what she wanted a library system they could shape to their own unique requirements and that didn’t require them to buy into an entire company, “We didn’t want to get sucked into an ecosystem that it would be tricky to get out of,” says Shaney.

Having previously had no real library system, Shaney could look at all the systems on the market and make an informed decision based on what was genuinely best for their school and budget. “We chose Accessit out of all of the possible options that were available, as we weren’t tied to any particular brand or company.”

Starting from zero

The process of starting from scratch and inputting 10,000 volumes was no mean feat, and Shaney put a lot of time into supporting Ayumi, the school librarian, during these early days. “We had reservations about starting from zero. Ayumi wasn’t technically a trained librarian – but Accessit made it simple for someone who doesn’t have that background to catalogue new books. And it’s been great to be able to keep all our school resources in one place, including self-generated PDFs,” says Shaney.

“We also love the interface. It’s very dynamic, and it’s nice that you can move things around the way you want to and put engaging videos and links on the front page to make the library more interesting for the students.”

Aside from the features and usability, Shaney loves the fact that Accessit isn’t a running advertisement for itself, “Other than the URL you can’t even tell you’re using Accessit.”

Around-the-clock support

Support was always a key factor for Shaney. Having had experience with a school management system located only in England, she knew they needed to find a library management system that could serve their time-zone, “The fact that Accessit had support offices all around the world was actually one of the selling points,” says Shaney.

“The support at Accessit has been amazing. We give the team 15 stars out of 5. We would connect through Skype, and they would often check up on us to see if everything was going okay. We found the team very responsive and very receptive and they have done a wonderful job for us.”

“For a small school like ours, with one librarian, Accessit has allowed us to have a proper library in a very, very short amount of time. We are extremely grateful to Accessit, and I would, and do, recommend it to any school who is thinking of changing or adopting a new library system. We were very impressed with Accessit on paper, and having been through the past 3 years of implementing and using it, we have not a single regret,” says Shaney.