ONC BOCES School Library System: SCOOLS & ILL

The “SCOOLS”  initiative pioneered an early open source library automation community. Six New York State School Library Systems envisioned an open source, Web-based, standards-based union catalog to provide almost paperless, managed interlibrary loan services for approximately 399 schools in their six regions. The database now houses more than 1.5 million titles (3.3 million plus holdings), and uses the Internet to communicate and manage the ILL process. In New York State, 29  School Library Systems now use OPALS’ union catalog to provide resource sharing and cataloging resources to over 2500 libraries. This initiative has also been adopted by consortia in many other US States, special interest associated libraries, and internationally by organizations in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and East Asia.

New York State's South Central Organization of (School) Library Systems. (August, 2017). SCOOLS Union Catalog: History and Mission. Retrieved from http://scools.org/bin/home?portal_lid=1.

SCOOLS

South Central Organization Of (School) Library System (ILL)

SCOOLS 

Scools Policy​

• Library staff will log on to the www.scools.org website at least once a day to check for pending ILLs.
• Send items requested from within your BOCES directly to that school (Point-to-Point).  Include a copy of the request slip with due date indicated.
• Send items requested from other BOCES to your local BOCES ILL coordinator for shipping.  Include a copy of the print slip generated by the SCOOLS Catalog with due date indicated.
• Search from schools within your own BOCES first.  Please remember- try to request from all schools not only those schools listed first alphabetically.
• You may request from schools outside your BOCES if requested titles are not available within your BOCES.
• The normal loan period for interlibrary loan is six weeks.
• When an item is returned, the Borrower needs to mark it as Returned and when the Lender receives it, they will need to mark it as Received.
• SCOOLS allows users to request up to ten copies from outside your BOCES. If you need more than ten copies will the request will be processed through your BOCES ILL coordinator.

SCOOLS Update Febuary 2010

SCOOLS Update May 2017

To find articles or books not held in the SCOOLS system, use Worldcat(First Search) and reach out to ONC BOCES SLS for processing. We are always here to help.

Point-to-Point 2020-2021 Statistics