Liberty is an easy to use system, there is clear navigation and it’s reliable in every way – making my job much easier.

Allison Jackson, Librarian, WWF

WWF is a world-leading conservation organisation working across 100 countries. Formed in 1961, the organisation aims to conserve nature and reduce the threats to the diversity of life on earth.

The library

The WWF UK branch has a library that is used by staff, researchers and occasional students for research purposes. With a collection of books, journals and an off-site archive of WWF publications the library offers a central hub of specialist information on conservation and wildlife. WWF chose Liberty as their library management system to offer a central management and search system, enabling users across all three UK WWF sites to access the library.

Allison Jackson, WWF Librarian comments:

“Choosing to move to Liberty as an online system brought more management and user functionality as well as making the library accessible from any location”

As previous users of Softlink’s Alice system upgrading to Liberty was the best way to extend access to resources and maintain a high level of service.

Allison also says:

“I chose to upgrade to Liberty to modernise our library system from Softlink’s Alice software a number of years ago. The decision was easy as I wanted to continue to receive the excellent service I always received from Softlink’s technical team and the reliability of the service.”

Using Liberty

The WWF base in the UK have access to an off-site archive of approximately 4,000  WWF publications and collections, these records can be searched within the Liberty catalogue to be requested to read, extending the access to sharing of information across the organisation globally.

Approximately 1,000 printed books along with journals and online articles are all catalogued in Liberty, the intuitive and advanced searching functionality makes it easy for library users to find exactly what they need for their research.The management functionality is intuitive supporting the efficient management of the library with automatic workflows for cataloguing and circulation among more.

Allison further comments:

“Liberty is an easy to use system, there is clear navigation and it’s reliable in every way – making my job much easier. I particularly like the cataloguing functionality, as a long term user of Liberty I can say it’s a great resource management solution”

Users can also access the library via the WWF intranet, this is achievable through a web API that enables integration between Liberty and intranet sites.  The library catalogue can be searched directly from the intranet, making online articles and resources more accessible internally and from any remote location.

Working with Softlink

WWF have used library management solutions from Softlink for many years, changing from Alice to Liberty was seamless as Softlink took care of the upgrade and conversion every step of the way.

Allison comments:

“I had no concerns when upgrading to Liberty, the Softlink team took care of everything from implementation to data conversion. Liberty was up and running to begin using from day one with no issues”

Hosting Liberty

WWF changed from hosting Liberty on their internal servers to a cloud hosted solution from Softlink. By choosing the hosted solution this extended the support they received as all management, monitoring and maintenance is carried out by Softlink’s technical team.

“The support team at Softlink were always very helpful and now we have moved to a hosted solution the service is faster and more reliable – I have no worries about the system and don’t have to carry out back-ups anymore as this is taken care of daily by Softlink”