Thomas Telford School

About Thomas Telford School

Thomas Telford School (commonly referred to as TTS) is a City Technology College in Telford, Shropshire and is sponsored by The Mercers’ Company and Tarmac Holdings Limited. The mixed ability school is consistently rated as the top performing comprehensive school in England, and was the first to achieve a GCSE pass rate of 100% A*- C grades. The school was founded in 1991 as the eighth of fifteen specialist City Technology College’s set up to raise educational standards in inner-city areas. The catchment area includes Telford, Wolverhampton and the villages and suburbs in between. The school currently has 1200 students from the age of 11 through to 18 and 212 staff members.

The Library

The school library holds 18,202 resources over 2 floors including books, dvds and language cds. The library has a dedicated computer area and acts as a study area for up to 35 children, it is also used for Library Skills teaching for the new Year 7 students.

To support the management of the library, Thomas Telford School have been using Softlink’s Oliver system for 11 years.
Margaret Howells, Past Librarian at Thomas Telford School commented,

“The aim of the library is to provide resources to enhance learning and recreation and to engender in all students an understanding of Library & Information Skills for further, higher and lifetime education."

Margaret went on to say,

“The students can access the Oliver library catalogue from anywhere which is amazing, and a lot of the students do this from home, it gives great independence to the students when accessing the Library Catalogue."

Supporting the role of the Librarian

The built in reports that are available in Oliver are fantastic, Margaret can create OFSTED reports, borrowing reports and overdues with great ease.
With the use of Oliver, Margaret finds keeping track of everything within the school much more efficient.

“I like to be able to see what resources are available and also where certain resources are in the school, and with Oliver I can put resources into a certain department in the school, which is very useful when in come to supplying resource boxes to different departments."

Margaret went on to say,

“I find Oliver fulfils all of my needs, I use it with ease and can get things completed quickly and efficiently."

“Cataloguing my resources could not be faster or easier, which frees up a lot of my time for other tasks within the library."

Engaging the students in the library

Students at Thomas Telford School can use Oliver with ease, whether they are in the library or at home, the students can access the Library Catalogue.
All students have access to the school library 5 days a week between 8am & 4.45pm.

Margaret uses several options on her Oliver homepage to promote events and updates to students, including the Top 5 borrowed books and what’s new in to the library that term.

“Discovering information is simple for the students at Thomas Telford School. When using the advanced search capability in Oliver it is very effective for students to search for resources quickly and accurately."

Benefits

• An effective solution to help track, manage and report on library resources
• Reduced time spent carrying out tasks with automatic workflows and features
• Increased access to the library for students and staff
• Increased student engagement in the library
• More productive use of time for library activities

Learn more about the functionality in Oliver v5

• Video – Peek into Oliver v5
• Case study – Rangitoto college
• Case study – Feversham Academy