”We migrated to OPALS this year, an open-source ILS which is a fraction of the cost of proprietary systems. The transition was incredibly painless and the customer support is prompt, empathetic and thorough.”Academic Librarian
Accolades for OPALS
As has been the case for many years past, OPALS has been consistently lauded by our clients for offering the best ILS on the market in terms of reliability, technical support, as well as cost effectiveness. The latest results were published in the 2017 international survey of library automation from the librarytechnology.org website. Of particular note, this year OPALS was again singled out for receiving highest scores in every single category among school libraries, AND, for the first time, we scored highest among small academic libraries as well.
Below you will find our full report scores from the 2017 Survey Report as well as many unsolicited words of satisfaction from our thousands of clients.
Library Technology Guides
Documents, Databases, News, and Commentary
Perceptions 2017: An International Survey of Library Automation
https://librarytechnology.org/perceptions/2017/
“This eleventh edition of the International Survey of Library Automation presents the latest data on how libraries perceive the effectiveness of the strategic technology systems upon which they depend for their daily operations and to fulfill the expectations of their patrons. This report presents and interprets survey responses gathered from November 2017 through February 2018. The survey focuses primarily on integrated library systems and library services platforms as the applications used to acquire, describe, manage, and provide access to their collections. It also assesses the quality of support given from the respective vendor and probes interest in migrating to new solutions and attitudes toward open source alternatives.”
“The open source OPALS ILS (full product report and narrative comments) implemented primarily in school libraries (chart of implementations by library type), received its usual enthusiastic response, with 261 libraries using OPALS completing the survey. OPALS was developed and supported by Media Flex, Inc. (view company profile). Many libraries using OPALS receive support services from their district rather than from Media Flex directly. In the state of New York, many of the BOCES provide OPALS for the school libraries they support. This year, 165 responses for OPALS came from school libraries, 8 from consortia, 5 from small public libraries, and 23 from small academic libraries.
OPALS received top ratings in all categories by libraries serving PreK-12 Schools: Overall satisfaction (8.89), ILS functionality (8.85), print functionality (8.90), electronic resource functionality (8.90), and company loyalty (8.77). OPALS also received top ratings in all categories for small academic libraries.
The following table presents the 2017 survey results for OPALS by library type and size:
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Survey Responders’ Comments
Maintained by Marshall Breeding – Copyright 1999-2018
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”MediaFlex, which offers and maintains OPALS for us, has been consistently the most responsive company in terms of customer support. Having worked with them since 2007, we continue to enjoy a close working relationship.”
School Librarian -
”Thanks to OPALS, 85-90% of our incoming back-office tasks are now smoothly handled automatically – against the former only 10%. We did not experience any troubling side-effects of any kind during/after implementation”
Bazh-GFx Academic Librarian”I can't believe that in an era like this I can still pick up the phone and get connected right away with people who are directly running the business and solve the problem right then and there. It is so rare and I deeply appreciate that! I will reach out to a few other small schools in my area and let them know about your company!”
School Librarian -
”We migrated to OPALS this year, an open-source ILS which is a fraction of the cost of proprietary systems. The transition was incredibly painless and the customer support is prompt, empathetic and thorough.”
Academic Librarian”MediaFlex, which offers and maintains OPALS for us, has been consistently the most responsive company in terms of customer support. Having worked with them since 2007, we continue to enjoy a close working relationship.”
School Librarian -
”Thanks to OPALS, 85-90% of our incoming back-office tasks are now smoothly handled automatically – against the former only 10%. We did not experience any troubling side-effects of any kind during/after implementation”
Bazh-GFx Academic Librarian”I can't believe that in an era like this I can still pick up the phone and get connected right away with people who are directly running the business and solve the problem right then and there. It is so rare and I deeply appreciate that! I will reach out to a few other small schools in my area and let them know about your company!”
School Librarian -
