Appraisal Institute – illumin case study

‘I couldn’t do my job today without illumin’

Eric Goodman, Louise Lee Lum Library of the Appraisal Institute

illumin is Softlink’s Reference Management and Knowledgebase tool.

It has been implemented by a wide range of Softlink clients, from large research organizations with hundreds of thousands of saved pieces of research, to the single Librarian who sees illumin as a valued helpmate and efficiency tool.

Eric Goodman, Y.T. at the Louise Lee Lum Library of the Appraisal Institute, is the next to newest member of the illumin family and went “live” with illumin on April first.

A long time Liberty user, Eric was contacted by Softlink staff who understood his current staffing and work load challenges (now a single Librarian after almost 20 years of providing services to the Institute with a very busy staff of 3) and presented illumin to him as a partial solution.

From Eric’s point of view, Softlink had always offered extraordinary services and tools that allowed him to provide a one-of-a-kind research environment for their over 23,000 professionals.

With Liberty, he offered members the ability to search for over 17,000 fully catalogued and full text attached articles from 80 plus years’ worth of Institute publications.

75% of Eric’s time is devoted to research and historically this was done via email or phone calls, producing mountains of paper (which covered his desk) and sending a few public inquiries to the membership by email. Since implementing illumin, he has brought organization to the chaos. He can find previous research easily with illumin’s powerful searching capabilities and is no longer frustrated with the limited options he had searching in Outlook.

This also frees time that he can use for extended research projects that were previously seen as “luxury”. Mandatory quarterly statistical reports were previously acquired by counting pieces of paper. With illumin more detailed and accurate metrics are acquired with a few clicks.

As he is providing reference, Eric is simultaneously building a knowledgebase that his researchers can “mine”. Part of Eric’s mission is to provide general library access to his knowledge and resources, 24 x 7, and with illumin he is fulfilling this.

When asked about Softlink services Eric responded,

“Softlink staff provide the kind of attention to detail that make the difference between Softlink and other vendors. With Softlink you don’t just learn how the program works. You learn how to make it work for you.”

‘I couldn’t do my job today without illumin’.