Chicago Public Schools chooses TLC
Largest Library•Solution for Schools customer
INWOOD, W.Va. (July 10, 2009) - The Library Corporation (TLC) has achieved its largest Library•Solution® for Schools partnership through a contract signed last year with the Chicago Public Schools.
The district of more than 650 schools will upgrade from multiple library automation systems, including Follett and Sagebrush, to Library•Solution for Schools, TLC's Web-based, centralized automation. The implementation of the new system is based on a five-year plan beginning with a pilot phase that was recently completed.
CPS serves more than 408,000 students and employs more than 44,000 staff members. It is the third largest school district in the United States, with an annual budget of over $5 billion. The new library automation system from TLC will greatly improve student access to information, while centralizing will streamline district operations.
Paul Whitsitt, director of Libraries and Information Services for CPS, said: "We're excited to be able to offer 24-hour access to our collections, enhanced electronic resources, and student-generated content for students and teachers throughout the district. The opportunities for improved teaching and learning are enormous!”
Joint CPS/TLC load testing of the system has shown a capacity to handle in excess of 4,500 circulation transactions per minute, as well as 2,400 LS2 PAC searches per minute. This is equivalent to a capability of over 2 million transactions per day.
Gar Sydnor, senior vice president at TLC, commented: "We understood early on that Chicago Public Schools chooses its vendors very carefully because of its size. TLC's attention to detail is ideally suited for these large implementations, and our speed and performance testing speaks for itself."
Library•Solution for Schools' software offers media specialists and students advanced features that include Web 2.0 technologies such as user reviews, ratings, and dynamic tagging. Staff has single-click access to reports, training, and other applications including quick class sets and student photos. Circulation and automatic cataloging functions are all performed from within a browser. The students at CPS will be able to find books using predictive searching and library mapping functions. They can get federated results from electronic databases with every search.
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