Infor Library and Information Solutions

Croydon College Implements Iguana

Recently Croydon College successfully completed its implementation of Iguana, Infor's marketing and collaboration platform that integrates a library's catalog and website. With Iguana, Croydon College offers students and faculty a completely fresh web presence and improved access to the library's services and collections.

Says Tom Butler, Head of Library, Information and Print Services: "For us it was time to take the library catalogue to the next stage. In our previous system - AquaBrowser - users had to navigate one interface for search, i.e. AquaBrowser, and another one, the Web OPAC, for user activities as well as a library web site for information resources. Iguana allows us to create a single environment, which dramatically improves the user experience. The system also provides a very intuitive integrated search interface and the results are much richer when related items are displayed. And the ability to bring social networking into the catalogue will of course add an extra dimension to our offering as well."

Croydon College library provides users access to over 50,000 resources. The library has a wide selection of videotapes, audiotapes, journals, DVDs and CDs and provides users 24/7 access to online resources both inside and outside the College. The vast majority of library transactions are self-service accounting for 95% of loans, 89% of returns, 69% of renewals and 86% of reservations.

"Given the very high percentage of self-service transactions, finding ways of enhancing the online experience was vital", continues Butler. "The way learners interact with us has completely changed over the years. So one of the key selling features of Iguana was the ability to roll it out to mobile and tablet devices. Beyond the end-user experience, there's also the upside from a system management perspective. We have been able to easily and quickly develop lots of content. The ability to create widgets, which can be deployed on multiple pages but updated individually means we can now deliver pages specifically for courses with lots of generic information in them. Now we can update the information centrally rather than having to edit each page individually."

To view the Iguana implementation at Croydon College, visit:http://www.croydon.ac.uk/library.

More information about Croydon College may be found at:http://www.croydon.ac.uk.