Are you using Oliver to its full potential? (Part One)

Did you know that Oliver isn’t just a Library Management System? You can use Oliver to keep track of resources throughout your entire school.

Archival information, textbooks and computers are the most popular resources being tracked by our clients but they are also tracking musical instruments, sheet music, lawn mowers, cricket bats, puppets and even Lego robot kits.

Your options are endless!

But before you rush out and start cataloguing everything in sight, here are a few things to consider:

1. Do you have support from senior admin?

   It’s important to get the backing of your senior leadership before you begin. Also, check if they already have a system in place that could conflict with your new tracking initiative. This ensures you're all on the same page.

2. Have you set a budget range?

   Think about setting an upper and lower dollar value for the items you want to catalogue. This will help you stay focused and avoid becoming overwhelmed by tracking every single item in the school.

3. How will you identify your resources?

   One of the first steps in tracking is labelling your items. Clients have used a variety of methods, such as engraving, Dymo labels, permanent markers, or keyrings with plastic tags. For items on long-term loan, like musical instruments, using keyrings attached to the case is a popular option. One tag can record the resource details (barcode, model, serial number), and another can list the name of the student it’s loaned to, along with your school’s contact information.

   For smaller items, like flutes, try attaching a keyring to the fabric lining of the case. This way, the identification stays secure, even without a handle!

4. What’s your level of involvement?

   Are you simply providing login details and letting others manage their own cataloguing? Or will you be handling everything—from identifying and tagging items to managing loans, returns, and stocktakes? Decide where you fit in the process, and keep it realistic based on the time and resources available.

5. Are other departments on board?

   Collaboration is key! Will the various departments you're cataloguing for be ready to work with you? It’s important to ensure they’ll assist with providing accurate terminology, locating important documents like receipts or warranties, and helping with regular stocktakes. Having their support will make your job much easier.

6. Start small - don’t bite off more than you can chew.

   It’s tempting to jump in and catalogue everything at once, but the general consensus is to start small. Work with the departments or staff who are most enthusiastic and build from there. Gradually expanding the scope will keep things manageable and ensure success.

Branch vs. Collection

Whether you create a specific branch for equipment or have a collection of equipment within your library branch is a personal choice. Some factors that might affect your decision are:

• The size of your school and the number of resources you are cataloguing.
• Will the resources be managed by library staff or by other staff in the school?
• Are the resources all located in the library or elsewhere in the school?

For a small school with a limited number of resources, the simplest option might be to have a single library branch with one of your collections called equipment.

A medium-size school might have a library branch and a department branch. The department branch could have multiple collections for sports, AV, computers, music, etc.

A larger school might set up a branch each for the IT department, music department or science department etc. The IT department branch could be used to track computers, computer software CDs, computer books and much more. The advantage of this option is that each branch gets its own home page. The IT department home page could be used to advertise computer classes, new computer games being purchased or opening hours for the computer room, etc.

If you are not sure, start small and use Oliver’s Exchange function to change the location of your resources when you are ready to create a more complex system.

Equipment BibType

The equipment BibType is already set up in Oliver for you. The following additional fields will automatically be available at the copy level when you allocate a resource to the BibType of equipment:

Description	Engraved	Currency (for Donor)	Responsible Staff
Make	Cost to Library	Comment	Date last sighted
Model	Currency (for Library)	Building (location of equipment)	Method (disposal)
Serial Number	Cost to Donor	Room	Remark

Cataloguing Considerations

• Resource titles: Will you catalogue resources broadly (e.g., "Computers") with different brands and models at the copy level, or use specific titles (e.g., "Apple MacBook Pro 13 inch") for each item?
• Additional items: Consider whether items like chargers, mice, or cables will be cataloged separately or mentioned in the Notes field. The decision may depend on how frequently items are lost and how much time you can devote to cataloguing.
• Equipment Maintenance: Oliver allows you to track maintenance at the copy level, such as replacing light bulbs in projectors or batteries in laptops. You do this by going to the individual copy level of your equipment item and clicking on the Add Maintenance button.

To add even more value to your equipment register you could scan documents like warranties and user manuals and attach them to the resource details.

If you have concerns about the information being visible in the search results then there are several options available to you. The first option is to choose Hidden in Search when editing your BibType. This means that the BibType, and all resources with this BibType will be hidden from everyone in the search results. Another option is to apply security to an individual resource. Security is controlled by User Roles which means that a teacher could login and access the resource but it could be restricted from view for students.

Advanced users might like to try creating new BibTypes or duplicating existing BibTypes. You could also use Page Layout to add additional fields and Translations to change the field names to make them more relevant for these newly created BibTypes. For example the Music Department might like to make a Sheet Music BibType and use Page Layout and Translations to add fields like Musical Form (sonata, symphony, opera), Instruments (violin, orchestra) and Performers (London Philharmonic Orchestra).

General Material Designation (GMD)

GMD enables an additional level of clarification for a BibType. For example, the resources in the image below are all part of the BibType of eBooks. I have used GMD’s displaying website logo’s to provide additional information about the free websites where these eBooks can be downloaded from.

To do this go to Management > GMD, Create a New GMD and attach an image to the GMD.

If you allocate an image to the GMD it will override the BibType image and the GMD image will be displayed in the search results instead of the BibType image. If there is no GMD image then the BibType image will be displayed.

Another example could be a BibType of Musical Instruments and GMD’s of String, Brass, Woodwind and Percussion. Upload an image of a violin, trumpet, clarinet and drum to make your GMD’s easy to spot in the search results.

Hopefully you have picked up a few tips for tracking resources in your school. Have a go at some of the above ideas. In the next article I will discuss setting up a branch for school archives.

For assistance - use the Help area in your Oliver v5 system to search for the following help articles:

How to Add a Branch	How to Create a GMD with an Image
How to Create and Edit a Collection	How to Add an Equipment Copy to a Resource
Overview of BibTypes and BibType Entities	Overview of Equipment Copy Records
How to Create a BibType	How to Add Maintenance Details to an Equipment Copy Record

Looking for more Oliver v5 tips?

• In this blog post, we offer suggestions for using Oliver to keep track of school archival information
• Reading Lists are a valuable tool in Oliver v5, which library staff can use to help their borrowers easily locate specific resources. Learn more about reading lists here.
• Looking for ways to engage students in the library, this blog post discusses ways that Oliver v5 can help.

Editor’s note: this post was originally published in November 2016 and was updated for freshness, relevance and accuracy in November 2024.