SCIS, ELR and publishers

The Schools Catalogue Information Service (SCIS) is a cataloguing collective based in Melbourne, Australia. SCIS creates high-quality, consistent catalogue records for school libraries. We catalogue titles for the benefit of more than 10,000 SCIS subscribers across the world (including 93 per cent of Australian schools and more than 50 per cent of New Zealand schools).

SCIS works with most major publishing companies across Australia, who send advance physical copies of their publications to us as part of their standard workflow. This helps to ensure the SCIS database remains current, comprehensive, and diverse.

Why do I want my books on SCIS?

Exposure

The SCIS database contains records for more than 1.5 million titles, with over 4,000 records added every month. Each catalogued title is featured in our ‘Recently catalogued’ carousel and can be discovered via the SCIS database.

Efficiency

SCIS is committed to creating a seamless cataloguing workflow for schools. By providing advance copies of your titles for inclusion in the SCIS catalogue, you will help simplify your customers’ workflow. For more information refer to the section below, ‘How can I get my books added to the SCIS database?’.

‘When a title arrives at the library, one of the first steps for staff is to log into SCIS and scan its ISBN,’ says Queensland teacher librarian, Tanya. ‘The ability to easily download a complete catalogue record saves an immeasurable amount of time for busy library staff.’

Quality

Having titles catalogued with SCIS also means that schools are receiving quality catalogue records. Dewey Decimal Classification and educational subject headings are assigned to SCIS records, which improves search capabilities and resource management, and ensures consistent standards are applied across all published resources.

‘If a title is catalogued poorly,’ Tanya says, ‘it will not appear in searches and may end up sitting on the shelf unused. In more and more school libraries around Australia, staff are working as library managers without having had specific catalogue training. It is crucial that staff can download quality catalogue records.’

How does SCIS work with ELR?

Each year, the Office for the Arts undertakes the annual Educational Lending Right (ELR) School Library Survey as part of the Australian Lending Right schemes. 

For book creators and publishers to register their titles with Lending Rights, they need to be catalogued in a national database — either that of SCIS or the National Library of Australia. Items will need to be submitted to SCIS by mid-February each year, in order for them to be catalogued and eligible for a Lending Rights claim. We encourage publishers to send us new release titles for inclusion in the SCIS catalogue year-round.

How can I get my books added to the SCIS database?

SCIS’s cataloguing practice is to catalogue from item in hand, so the quickest method to get titles into the SCIS database is to supply physical copies.

Our cataloguers can then create the SCIS record, apply the most appropriate Dewey Decimal Classification, write the book summary, and include terms from controlled vocabularies to make each title discoverable by school users.

To find out which publishers SCIS currently works with, please visit our Publishers and content providers page.

Please contact our customer service team at [email protected] to register your interest.