Effectiveness of my OPAC system - Athena


My resource center is different from most other schools in my district, and in fact the province, in that we use Athena as our OPAC system versus the others who use Library Pro. Historically, this evolved because the well trained and visionary TL (who I replaced when she retired), advocated for the system despite its comparative expense at the time.

She did a lot of background checking and reviewed the features of Athena for its flexibility, ease of use by TL and patrons, its ongoing tech. support, and useful applications and was successful in convincing the administration of its value in terms of library management and its ease of use by students and teachers to access resources.  The following features show how Athena's flexibility and power enhance library management and organization which in turn promotes through ease of use the resources available and patron's level of comfort accessing them.  

Athena offers flexibility in setting various loan periods, ease in overriding due dates if necessary, as well a clear and easy to navigate menu system. In addition, Athena is extremely forgiving in that if you make changes you can view the changes before making it a global change (this has saved me more than once when I was learning the system). Athena can print numerous reports such as overdue items and circulation & collection statistics. Patron photographs can be imported into Athena. Searches can occur anywhere that has an internet connection, although we have not tapped into this option yet as we did have out on-line database accessible from home and was promoting this option for outside of school time. 
Quick and advanced searches are options using author, title of subject. Visual and icon-based search tools are also available. MARC records are easily downloaded, z39.50 option is available, and barcode and spine label printing is very straightforward.

One of my most favorite aspects of Athena is that it allowed multiple collection management, so that you can create sub-sets of your main collection. An example of where this is an advantage is when we received grade 9's for the first time this year... all of their materials were catalogued in a separate collection which could be accessed by anyone but for the purposes of keeping these records separate (as the grade 9's are expected to go to another school next year) is possible. Also when downloading MARC records for new resources, it is possible to work in a temporary collection, add notes, edit and see what you have before transferring it to the main collection.

The icon for Athena is found on all desktops in the school so that students and teachers can access what resources are in our resource center from anywhere in the building - great for encouraging access.

It is interesting the number of errors other TL have reported when managing their systems when using Library Pro, whereas I have rarely had to use my on-going (paid for yearly) software tech. support.

I am very grateful to have such a powerful and flexible OPAC system, the cost today ranges from $2495 - $3955. 
Athena offers flexibility and therefore can be responsive to the needs of students and teachers as well as being powerful in its numerous applications and management capabilities. Clear menus and a "back" features always allows the user to move easily through the various menus and is very clean in terms of visual appeal. 

As I read about what one should consider as criteria for a OPAC I would certainly rank Athena as very high in terms or flexibility and power, ease of use, and visual appeal. The cost was high but I guess this has to be balanced out with what you are getting, what competitors are offering at the time, and the priorities/vision you and your school admin. have for providing optimal access to resources.