1. John Calcott Head of Islington Education Library Service
Developing your SLS
John Calcott
Head of Islington
Education Library Service

2. Then and Now
In May 2006, we had approximately 144 SLS’s across the country
In 2013, we had approximately “81”, excludes the SLS’s in Scotland & NI
Lost: Birmingham, Cambridge, Croydon, Gateshead, Greenwich, Haringey, Kent, Southwark, South Tyneside, Sutton, (Berkshire)
Of the current “81” many are facing challenging times
Region
Number of Authorities
Number of SLSs
East Midlands 9 5
Eastern 11 3
London 32 16
North East 10
North West 21 12
South East 19 8
South West 17 7
Wales 6
West Midlands 14
Yorks and Humber
Total
163 81
Ascel: SLS Services 2013 Survey

3. Generating new business – the challenges
Concerns:
School Issues
School budgets
Primary school buy-back
The impact of the new National Funding Formula
SLS Issues
Impact of service area cuts to your budget
Increase in cost of resources, including staff
Additional resources to support new schools
Treading on “our neighbours toes”
Logistics:
Deliveries
Cost
Time
Storage

4. Staying afloat Two ways to sustain our services: Reduce costs
SLS collaborative working
Automation
Work experience / Volunteers
Generate more income
Have you targeted schools in neighbouring areas / boroughs?
How much new income have you generated over the past couple of years

5. Developing the business
How have you generated new business?
How much do you spend on marketing?
Do you analyse the impact different types of marketing has on your income figures?
Brochures or exhibitions?
What else?

6. Barriers to developing our service
How many of you have been contacted by an external school and felt unable to provide a service?
Why?

7. Possibilities
Offer a Pay as you Use service – less for teachers who collect their own topic boxes from you
Provide your service free for a term for interested schools
Offer yearly introductory offers to new schools
If you get a school in a new area through any of the above:
Target other schools in these areas with brochures
Include Reference Site lists of local schools using your service; names; contact details
If you get one school in an area, you are likely, with work to get more schools

8. Possibilities - continued
Communicate:
Inform one another of schools that require a service if you are unable to offer your service
If you are struggling as an SLS, are there opportunities to merge with a neighbouring SLS?
Much easier to merge than for another SLS to pick up the pieces
Work collaboratively with neighbouring

9. Competitors or Friends
Book suppliers
LMS providers
Furniture Design Companies

10. Competitors
All of the providers offer a service but we are selling their resources, systems to thousands of schools across the country.
Who wins them or us?

11. What if?

12. LMS – an alternative

13. Current Market Main players in the market: Micro Librarian Heritage
Softlink
Others –
AutoLib
Access IT-Software

14. Advantages All of the current market leaders provide good, robust LMS
Regular upgrades to improve their software
Good support generally
Good long term working relationships with Schools Library Services
SLS commission for new schools

15. Disadvantages
Are the software changes always necessary and do they benefit all schools and / or school library services
High costs to our schools
No ongoing commission to SLS’s for recommending that our schools stick with these companies
Reading Cloud – in competition with a National SLS eBook Platform

16. What if?
What if SLS’s across the country could offer an alternative LMS to our Primary Schools
Benefits – not an all singing all dancing LMS, but a simple system that allows, teachers, TA’s and pupils to carry out the following:
Issue / Return
Add new books to the catalogue
Add new pupils to the database
Run a collection of standard reports
Import new books from Peters and other book suppliers
Import pupil data from SIMS

17. Comparisons Micro librarian / Softlink / Heritage
A LMS for OUR schools and for US
Issue / Return
Yes
Pupil database
Catalogue
Reports
Icloud / eBook platform
Cost
£1745
Annual Support
£580 / £600
Issue / Return
Yes
Pupil database
Catalogue
Reports
A national SLS eBook platform
Cost
£500 / £550 (DC)
Annual Support
£275

18. Benefits Options: We would support our own schools
A percentage of the annual support income each year could be income for your school library service (£150)
We could offer the system to neighbouring schools that have no SLS
A nice way to generate dialogue about our services
A way of generating additional income
If not, topic loans, might generate some work in their school libraries

19. National Benefit!
A percentage of the annual support income each year could be pooled to help ASCEL promote SLS’s across the country (£25 per renewal)

20. Possible income options – Annual Support Pooled Commission
Authorities
Number of Primary Schools
10% of schools join
20% of schools
30% of schools
Islington 46 5 9 14
Tower Hamlets 65 7 13 20
Camden 32 3 6 10
Hackney 57 11 17
Haringey
Lewisham 2
Enfield 67
Barnet 91 18 27
Westminster 62 12 19
Harrow
Hounslow 4
Ealing 56
Brent 63
Hillingdon 75 8 15 23
Warwickshire
196 39 59
Leicestershire 41
Salford 76
Wiltshire
West Sussex
236 24 47 71
Example used – 19 authorities
Number of Schools per authority
1505
151
301
452
Commission pool all SLS's
£37,62500
£ ,775
£ ,525
£ ,300

21. Annual Support income for an SLS
An SLS with 46 schools could, if they managed to register 10 schools with this new LMS generate £1500 per year in annual support
If 10 schools in an authority purchased the LMS it would generate £2,250 in income to the local SLS
The LMS will be very robust so very little support will be required
If SLS’s provide support, this will ensure dialogue between the school and the SLS happens throughout the year
Might this generate additional work in schools in terms of library development / refurbishment?

22. Furniture Suppliers
Commission – If not, why?

23. Do we need to change?
SLS’s across the country are acting as a sales team for all the suppliers we recommend to schools:
Through our discussions we recommend and normally contact suppliers and provide Head Teachers with addresses for LMS, furniture quotations
LMS – are they on our side:
I had an from one of the leading LMS suppliers informing my schools that they would catalogue stock for a discounted rate of £400 per day
Who supports my schools for SIMS Pupil imports every September – me
Why should I promote a product that is in direct competition with the London / National eBook platform
Book suppliers have flirted with the idea of taking over the running of SLS’s