Issue 6

The Curriculum Corporation Board decision of April 28 to move the SCIS database to a new software platform, Voyager, and communications platform by the start of the 1994 school year has great implications for the Information Program and the Staff.

Information Staff are very enthusiastic about the change to the new platform because we believe that Schools will benefit with improved services, development of new products, i.e. SCIS database on CD-ROM, and a more cost efficient communications system. By the start of the 1994 school year the current list of products and services will be available to users, but a development schedule for new products will be in place.

Following a recent two-day planning session with Ferntree Computer Corporation, the Voyager facility manager, some decisions have been made that will impact on schools purchasing products in 1994.

1. To bring Victorian Primary Schools in accordance with an agreed national standard of cataloguing, the Victorian Catalogue Card options WILL NOT be offered as an option when ordering Catalogue cards in 1994.

2. Curriculum Corporation is considering NOT offering the Subject Authority Cards as a product to continue on to the new system, BUT would welcome comments by current users as to the usefulness of these cards and whether they should continue.

Currently they are available at $0.25 per set plus postage. Current usage pattern seems to indicate that schools prefer to produce Subject Authority cards from the Subject Authority Microfiche rather than purchase sets.

3. In 1994 Curriculum Corporation WILL NOT continue to offer as part of the ASCISRECON service, BOOK AND MICROFICHE Catalogues. Library software packages have the capabilities to print out book catalogues when SCIS records are transferred to the system and lack of requests for microfiche catalogues does not warrant them continuing on to the new system.

The supply of machine readable records through the ASCISRECON program will be enhanced with an upgraded program.

Over the next two editions of Connections, I will continue to update users with the progress on the development of the new system.