Technical college switches to Surpass from TLC and saves thousands, increases performance

Budget cuts spurred David Bunnell to action. The director of Learning Resources for Griffin (GA) Technical College, David had been using TLC’s Library.Solution for years to manage a collection of about 15,000 volumes. However, paying thousands of dollars per year in maintenance costs was becoming quite a problem. David also suspected poor server performance was caused by heavy requirements of Oracle, the back-end database in use.

Griffin Technical College needed automation that would cost less…and perform better! Though David examined several affordable automation packages, none seemed to be appropriate until a colleague at another technical college recommended Surpass.

“Switching to Surpass was the best decision,” David said. “It’s been very easy to customize and fit things in. Everybody I’ve introduced to our new Surpass system, as far as students and faculty, really likes it.”

Surpass eliminates annual database access fees
David was first sold on Surpass Copycat, which enables him to download free MARC records from the Internet. The library dropped the cataloging solution they used, which required an annual database access fee. Now they are enjoying great success cataloging with no-fee Surpass Copycat software.

Surpass greatly reduces annual maintenance and server requirements
Soon after downloading free trial versions of the full Surpass automation package David was convinced that he had found the right solution.

Not only was the price right and the annual maintenance far lower than what they had been paying but also the system required far less overhead on the server. Surpass is the affordable and top-performing solution the technical college needed.

Surpass demonstrates excellent performance and ease of use
Describing the Surpass Web Safari catalog, David noted how much faster it performs than their previous system. The staff at the library are well pleased with the switch, too. They were immediately able to customize Web Safari’s Visual Navigator to reflect the college’s courses of study and display matching items from the collection. This instantly replaced the manual creation of “subject guides” on the library web site, a time consuming process that was difficult to keep up to date. The staff also enjoys the ability to store items as a bibliography in “bookbags.”

Surpass helps technical schools do more with less
Surpass has eased the budget strain on the library and increased the power of its automation system. “Surpass saved us money to do other things that we could not afford before, such as purchasing a serials module,” David related.

“I’ve been pleased with sales staff and support,” David enthused. “The price has been right, for the size of our library it’s a perfect fit, and it’s something we’ll be able to grow with. In fact, I just imported all of our Net Library records for our e-books. The links work really well.”

David has been quick to recommend Surpass automation to other technical school staff. He concluded, “Our overall experience has been really excellent.”