St Paul’s Primary School, Bentleigh

About St Paul’s Primary School

St Paul’s Primary School is located in Bentleigh, 15kms south of the Melbourne CBD. The Catholic school opened in 1928, with three classrooms above the parish church, and was run by the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart until 1993.

Today, the school maintains a strong connection with the Catholic faith providing a welcoming, inclusive, respectful and forgiving environment where students and staff can be enriched by the school’s tradition and inspired and nourished by observance of the Catholic faith.

The sacred nature of the original church building has also been preserved. It is now home to the school library, and still features the original hand crafted wooden cross and stained glass windows, providing daily inspiration to the school community.

Introducing Oliver v5

In 2015 St Paul’s Primary School introduced Oliver v5 to manage their collection of over 18,500 resources.

Library Manager Despina Alexopoulis said that the school had outgrown their previous library system and were looking for a system that provided reliability and improved response times.

“I have now worked with Oliver v5 for just over a year and it has been fantastic. In the early stages of the implementation project I was unfamiliar with the software, but the Softlink team have always been quick to respond to my questions and the support I received has been extremely helpful."

Benefits of Oliver v5

Students at St Paul’s Primary School have also benefited from the switch to Oliver v5.

Despina said that Oliver’s search tools are helping promote independent library exploration.

“Every class comes in for story and borrowing time. Even if the children are unsure about the spelling, they can start typing in a relevant word and Oliver’s predictive search will help them get it right. All the resources that match are right there in the one spot."

Despina works in the library three days a week and is passionate about delivering an engaging experience for the school’s 370 Prep to Grade 6 students. She organises for authors and illustrators to visit the library and leads older students in discussions on what they are reading during their weekly story time.

Despina is also focussed on the visual appearance of the library.

“I paint and draw all the displays in the library and change them over every 2 or 3 weeks depending on what is being taught in class or current events, such as Reconciliation Week. I like to keep the space as bright and interesting as time will allow me."
 

Oliver v5 is helping Despina to find more of that valuable time by reducing her administration burden.

“At the end of last year I had to roll over all the students into their new classes. It’s one of those tasks that only gets done once a year, so the Softlink staff logged in remotely to help me through the process. Before Oliver I would have had to manually input the names of every student and it would take me at least 4 hours. But doing it with Oliver was brilliant and I was prepared for the next year with library cards ready to go!"

Despina acknowledges that the prospect of changing library systems can be intimidating for busy library staff. But she is already seeing the benefits of having made the change to Oliver v5.

“I am so glad I put the proposal up to our Principal for a change over in the library system. I had to learn about the new procedures, and I’m learning more all the time. But it has certainly been worthwhile."

Learn more about Oliver v5

• Video – Peek into Oliver v5
• Blog – 9 ways Oliver v5 can help boost student engagement in the library
• Blog - Oliver v5 community shares: why we love the new-look search interface and free training webinars