The Schools Catalogue Information Service (SCIS) is a national cataloguing service for Australasian schools. The SCIS database contains one million bibliographic records of educational materials.
Each record for each book, audiovisual item, computer program, learning object and website contains complete cataloguing details, including subject headings designed specifically to suit schools. Approximately 3,500 catalogue records are added to the SCIS database each month.
SCIS reduces the cost and effort required by library staff, freeing staff to teach students research and information skills, and to liaise with teachers.
SCIS launched its new website on Friday 31 July 2009. SCISWeb subscribers download library catalogue records from the SCIS database and search for information about educational resources, and in this new iteration using Web 2.0 tools, can engage with the SCIS team on issues about site and product usability. With its unique schools focus, used by 10,000 schools in Australia, New Zealand and overseas SCIS is valued as a high quality, cost saving library tool.
The SCIS team supports information services and products, including:
- Connections: quarterly newsletter for information services and ICT relevant to school libraries;
- Curriculum Leadership Journal: a weekly electronic magazine for Australian education leaders and managers;
- The Schools Online Thesaurus (ScOT): a natural language-controlled subject vocabulary;
- The Educational Lending Right (ELR) scheme: making payments to eligible Australian creators and publishers whose books are held in educational libraries; and
- Barcode scanners.
