Cricket New South Wales (NSW) went live with the Liberty library management system on the 19th of December 2018. The day also saw Sarah Thompson, Softlink IC’s Technical Services Manager travel to Sydney to train 3 of the 5 Cricket NSW library volunteers.

The volunteers are a committed bunch of cricket fans! They have devotedly managed all the material currently held in the library. Sarah was amazed to learn just how dedicated they are noting,

“One of the trainees had been a volunteer for 20 years. How amazing is that!”

For his part, the volunteer of 20 years stated that,

“Liberty is the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

Currently, the library has over 10000+ records ranging from books on and by cricketers from Don Bradman to Hansie Cronje. The collection also includes cricket statistics and ephemera collected over 100 years.

Liberty is the first library management system, automated or otherwise, provided to these dedicated Cricket NSW library volunteers. They were excited about the opportunity and eager to learn how to use Liberty.

Sarah guided them through the ins and outs of cataloguing as they begin the enormous task of entering records for each of the titles in their large collection. The Z-cataloguing feature is their new best friend. It will make a big job very easy.

It is the end result that excites them the most. Cataloguing all the material into one repository will ensure that both the volunteers and the researchers who use the library to complete articles and books, will easily find exactly what they are looking for.

The library is open to the public on Tuesdays, but their collection will now be accessible any time via their Liberty Homepage. Best still, researchers, and cricket fans alike, will be able to easily search for material on-line from wherever are.

It was a very successful day and as Sarah commented,

“It was a privilege to help the wonderful volunteers, who donate so much time and effort to something they love, to make their tasks so much easier.”