Magdalena Schultze joins Axiell Group on the 1st of February 2012 as Vice President for Communication and Human Development. She has latest worked as HR Director at Perstorp Holding, and before that as HR Director at BRIO AB and as Senior HR Manager at Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB.

Within Axiell – the leading technology and services specialist for public libraries, archives and museums in the UK and Scandinavia – Magdalena Schultze will have responsibility for the expansion of a human development policy as well as increasing Axiell’s brand and communication. As member of Axiell Group Management she will be able to contribute with her experiences within strategy and management and be a part of the team which will develop Axiell in the future.

Read more in the press release.
 

Axiell's two-day symposium "Rethinking Libraries?", held in London for senior managers from archives, museums and libraries also gave an award presentation for Axiell's "Digital Cultural Institution of 2011".

The winner was this year Jönköping School Library Service from Sweden. Teh service was chosen for its tremendous success in enabling students, teachers and parents to work digitally 24/7 through its use of Axiell Arena's web portal. The school library service in Jönköping has been a front runner and the first school system to develop its services in such an innovative way.

Elisabeth Fridsäll-Emilsson, development manager, Jönköping School Library Service, says, “At the School Library Service we have worked for several years on improving our services to the school libraries by offering them digital sources. With Axiell Arena we have found the solution which allows us to increase our services to teachers and pupils.”

Two other libraries were shortlisted: Silkeborg libraries, Denmark for opening up their libraries for the community in evenings and week-ends and Stockholm City Libraries, Sweden for their web solution biblioteket.se.

Two intense days, that featured exciting speakers and input from a range of cultural service reprisentatives are now over. The Conference had over 160 delegates in attendance which had more than 16 speakers from around the world, each discussion highlighting the challenges facing libraries today and the need for library services to rethink their business models by streamlining services and entering new partnerships.

The symposium discussed how future libraries should be shaped and gave the participants a lot of good ideas for how to develop their services despite budgetary constraints. The result of the presentations were all clear, that public libraries can make a difference to local communities and as Allen Weiner from the Gartner Inc. said “the magic happens where there is knowledge” and libraries are such a place where this can happen - both physically and online.

The symposium showed that library managers and cultural service leaders worldwide firmly believe in the future of libraries and the ongoing importance of reading, whether it is on a smartphone, eReader or physcial book.

Merton announces it has joined the London Libraries Consortium. Started in 2004, the consortium now numbers 15 London Boroughs, almost half the capital’s 32 Boroughs and covering over 3.6 million residents. Lewisham and Kingston-Upon-Thames have also joined in the last 12 months.

Anthony Hopkins, Head of Library and Heritage Services, says, “Merton Libraries boasts high customer satisfaction but like many other library services we are not well funded and we will gain cost reductions by joining the London Libraries Consortium. The partnership element where we share good practice with other Boroughs on a regular basis will also be invaluable as we make ongoing service improvements from cross-Borough shared services to innovative customer service initiatives.”

Merton went live with the stock consortium element of the programme in May, allowing the Borough to share costs on procurement and management of the stock procurement process with other consortium members. The consortium’s subscription to the smartsm evidence-based stock management tool will also allow Merton to better deploy its stock and to ensure that items held more accurately reflect user demand.

Purchasing the consortium’s Axiell library management system (LMS), through the consortium procurement framework will produce cost savings and bring other benefits. Anthony adds, “Although we already use Axiell’s OpenGalaxy, procuring through the consortium means we will now benefit from free upgrades to new applications and tools which are currently chargeable, such as the 24*7 automated telephone renewals hotline and acquisitions module. We were required by our councillors to prove a very strong case for savings and return on investment and were able to develop a robust case.”

The LMS will go live later this year with the shared catalogue and Axiell’s new 24/7 library and web portal, Arena, which will offer users across the Borough’s seven libraries and from any internet-enabled computer a more intuitive and interactive experience than traditional library catalogue searching.

The Borough plans to introduce the consortium’s EDI interface between its corporate finance system and the LMS, which will allow invoices to be paid through the corporate finance system rather than the current double entry system. This will also facilitate direct delivery of stock to individual library branches rather than to one central point, meaning library users can borrow new stock more speedily and transport costs are reduced.