Alex is a research librarian who spends his day managing and researching questions and projects with his company’s library team. He loves spreading the word about illumin, our research management system—his first mission.
He first fell in love with illumin after constantly losing and repeating his research, which meant wasting valuable time on the same tasks.
This caused Alex a lot of stress and frustration – along with confusing, unreliable reports and ineffective request tracking systems… that is, until he discovered illumin!
Now, Alex spends his days doing what he loves—researching, gathering statistics, and creating reports for his team. He even finds time to enjoy carrots and chai with Bob the Bibliographer!
With all that productivity, you’d think Alex would be satisfied, but no. He decided Liberty Digital, our Integrated Library System (ILS), deserved his attention… with style.
We had the chance to sit down for an exclusive interview with Alex to get a glimpse into a day in the life of one of Softlink IC’s key team members. Here’s what he shared:
Both illumin and Liberty Digital offer the latest user-friendly technology. They help deliver the services your users need and the outcomes you expect. Trust me, I’m an alpaca!
For full insights, watch the video below.
Name: Alex the Alpaca
Title: Research Librarian
Loves: Green grass & statistics
Hates: losing work & llamas.
What are the main responsibilities of your position?
Well, I mainly deal with spreading news about Softlink’s amazing products, illumin and Liberty!
But lately, I’ve been exploring other fields such as rapping, racing with Rob Otter, and playing ping pong! The latest rap I made was about my favorite parameters in Liberty, you should check it out here!
Recently, I was even lucky enough to be included in the Liberty Management Panel, lucky me!
What are some of your favorite features of Liberty and illumin?
My favorite feature of Liberty has got to be search field backgrounds! There are so many amazing designs that I’ve seen from Liberty users, I just can’t wait to see what people will do with the full screen search fields planned for a future Liberty release!
By far my favorite feature of illumin is its integration with Liberty. Did you know that you could automatically transfer your Liberty borrowers into illumin, for FREE?!
You can also have your illumin knowledge base automatically imported into your Liberty system during housekeeping through integration, isn’t that so handy? We even have a solutions article which teaches you exactly how to integrate the two systems together, contact us here to find out more.
What sort of activities do you do outside of work?
Outside of work I do a lot of the same things that I do at work. I’ve started my own rap career and have created my own YouTube channel to become famous one day! I may even upload some videos of me and my friends performing alpacapella!
Aside from my channel, I absolutely love going for a drive with Rob, and we like to practice on the way to work. I also LOVE to eat food! Grass and hay are some of my absolute favorites!
This year wasn’t just about software updates or company events; it was about our customers navigating digital change with our products. Across the sectors, we noticed the main benefits our systems provided were – time-saved, manual work reduction, and improvement in both resource discoverability and reporting strength. These helped deliver clearer outcomes to our customers’ organizations for 2025.
Rolling out a new system (OPAC – Online Public Access Catalogue; and Administration Portal) is more than just switching on a new interface and managing it via the staff portal. For many users, the system is the entire library and its operations – it’s the complete solution, the everyday resource management platform, and the system they rely on to run public library operations. So, there needs to be a smooth transition between old and new public library management software – not a disruption.
Softlink IC was proud to participate in the 39th ANZTLA Conference, held 26-29 November 2025 at The Women’s College, University of Queensland. This year’s theme, “Echoes of the past … creating stories for the future,” deeply resonated with our mission to support theological and special libraries in preserving knowledge and guiding discovery through innovation.
You already know your current system isn’t meeting your needs, but how do you get key decision-makers to see this, and convince them it’s time for a change?
Softlink IC attended SWITCH 2025, held at the Western Sydney Conference Centre in Penrith from November 11–14, this event marked a watershed moment because we got the chance to showcase the Aurora Product Suite to library professionals from across NSW and beyond for four days of connection and collaboration.
In this spotlight, we’re featuring our Development Manager James, who has marked 15 years with the company. James leads the team behind our Liberty, illumin, and Aurora product suites, ensuring the features we deliver are practical, high quality, and aligned with what our users need most. Known for his calm leadership, pragmatic mindset, and sharp problem-solving skills, James plays a vital role in keeping our development team and product direction on course.
