Heritage News & Events
Heritage Version 4.2.7 and Heritage Online 3.2 news!
Heritage 4.2.7 is available now to all Heritage customers with a current support contract. Please visit our support website the Maintenance Downloads page on our Support Website if you wish to download it. For more information please contact
Heritage Online 3.2 is also available. It included book cover images and a completely new user interface. We have also changed the licensing to make it more flexible, so all users wanting to upgrade to this version will need to upgrade to the new licensing structure, selecting the version that best suits the usage of their Heritage Online. The advantage to the new scheme is that each 'band' includes unlimited overflow licences, so no users will ever be refused access to Heritage Online! There are still existing customers that haven't upgraded their WebOPACs to Heritage Online yet. A working example of Heritage Online is available here for those that are interested. The upgrade is free, so what are you waiting for?
Heritage Connect Live, which enables Heritage to pull borrower details straight from your HR or enrolment system using ODBC is also available. In addition to this, the first release of Heritage Connect Out offers an ODBC interface for pulling data from Heritage (to export to Crystal reports etc). More details...
Exhibitions and Trade Fairs
IS Oxford staff attend a number of library exhibitions each year. Our sales and support services staff are present to demonstrate the Heritage software and answer any questions you may have about Heritage or IS Oxford.
Forthcoming Exhibitions
We will be attending the following exhibitions in the first half of 2009:
CILIP Library Management Systems Showcase, London
The next CILIP showcase will be held on 13th March 2009. Registration is free of charge. The CILIP Showcases are an ideal environment in which to get an in-depth look at systems - there is plenty of seating and a waiting area (as stands tend to be very busy) with tea, coffee and sandwiches provided for delegates.
LIS (Library Information Show)
Join us for the 20th Library Show at the NEC, Birmingham on 10 - 11 June.
Thursday 18 June 2009 to Saturday 20 June 2009, University Place Conference Centre, Manchester
Heritage Biometrics
Biometrics? That's 'fingerprint recognition' to you and me. Sounds very futuristic, but schools using Heritage have requested this module and it is now available. An outline of the features of Heritage Biometrics is provided if you are interested, but it is really very simple - if your readers keep forgetting their ID numbers or cards then why not use their fingerprints instead? After all, it is highly unlikely that they'd visit the library without them....
Congratulations Southport College!
The 2nd Umbrella Awards Dinner, organised by CILIP, saw Heritage users Southport College Library announced as the winners of the Tribal Technical Innovation Award as a result of their implementation of the Heritage Biometrics module.
A group of us from IS Oxford went to the dinner at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield to celebrate their achievement and cheer them on! We would like to congratulate Sue Haydock and Kath Halfpenny and their staff for a really well-deserved honour. The Biometrics module (i.e. fingerprint scan recognition) can stir up strong feelings in certain quarters, but Sue and Kath not only planned and managed the implementation well, they allayed the understandable concerns, and as an outcome they more than doubled library usage (in the period 1/9/06 to 1/4/07 compared with the previous year). They also significantly increased the "street cred" of the library. Only 4 of the 3,000 or so library users reserved their right to stick with the old library card identification method.
Kath wrote an article on the CILIP website about their experience and there is also news on the Southport College website. It's well worth a read if you are interested in knowing how they went about it and all the positive benefits that resulted.
Well done Sue and Kath. You'll have to clear a shelf in the library to display your award!
Charitable Giving
Each year at Christmas we give each of our staff £200 to spend as they wish on www.goodgifts.org in addition to individual larger charitable gifts by the company as a whole. This year quite a varied selection was made with choices as usual involving children and the environment. Again this year we have supplied another village library in India. The three most popular gifts this year were support an Afghan girl which was a new option this year, a years schooling and re-unite a child which have both always been very popular. Options for Children are always popular in one way or another and in addition to the above we have chosen to transform the life of 3 Indian street children, supply 4 maternity kits, give the gift of sight to 2 children, supply 6 schools with clean water and supply 3 orphan's dowry. Closer to home our popular choices were to supply 2 families of trees, 2 fruit trees, 3 bluebell woods, 3 meadows of flowers, plant 21 bagpipe saplings and restore 12m sq of greenbelt.