Automating Your School Library: A Practical Guide to Boost Reading

Many schools own books, but few know exactly which ones, where they are and who borrowed them. A library that cannot be searched or tracked ends up gathering dust on its shelves. Automating the catalogue and loans is how you put books back into the hands of students and teachers.

Why the school library matters more than ever

Reading remains the top education priority in sub-Saharan Africa. According to the 2022 update of The State of Global Learning Poverty (World Bank, UNESCO, UNICEF and partners), around 89% of children in the region cannot read and understand a simple text by age 10. Progress is possible: in Benin, PASEC 2019 results presented by the government in 2022 show that the share of end-of-primary pupils reaching the reading competency threshold rose from 51.7% in 2014 to 75.7% in 2019.

Consolidating these gains requires opportunities to read beyond the textbook. That is exactly the role restated in the IFLA-UNESCO School Library Manifesto, updated and endorsed in April 2025 by UNESCO’s Information for All Programme Council: the library improves teaching and learning for the whole school community, provided it offers real access to information and is run by a qualified team.

The most common obstacles

On the ground, the difficulties look alike from one school to the next:

• An uncertain inventory: incomplete paper registers, duplicates, books lost without anyone noticing.
• Loans that are hard to track: overdue items never chased, books that never come back at the end of the year.
• Tedious searching: without a searchable catalogue, students depend on the librarian’s memory.
• Scattered digital resources: useful PDFs, videos and links travel through messaging apps, with no organisation or access control.

The IFLA School Library Guidelines (2nd edition, 2015) stress precisely this: an organised, accessible collection managed through clear procedures. Software is not an end in itself, but it makes those principles workable day to day.

Automating your library: the steps that work

1. Review the collection. Weed out damaged or outdated books before entering anything: only catalogue what deserves to be lent.
2. Set shared rules. Call numbers, reading levels, subject categories: decide them once and write them down.
3. Catalogue in batches. Start with the most requested titles. ISBN import saves a great deal of time for recent books; older or locally published works are entered by hand.
4. Label each copy. Every physical copy gets its own call number and identifier, separate from the title record.
5. Register readers. Linking library cards to student and staff lists avoids double entry and orphan records.
6. Define the loan policy. Duration, number of items, renewals, reminders: rules everyone knows reduce disputes.
7. Add digital resources. Gather the documents your school has the rights to share and restrict them to the relevant classes.
8. Train and promote. A short demonstration for teachers and class representatives is often enough to get things going.

A checklist before you start

• Who is responsible for the catalogue, and who stands in when they are away?
• How many titles and copies need to be entered, and in what order?
• Are student and teacher lists up to date?
• Which digital resources is the school allowed to distribute?
• How will students and families be informed of the new rules?

How SciAut Biblio helps

SciAut Biblio is the digital library of the SciAut Suite, designed for librarians, students and teachers. It supports each of the steps above:

• Catalogue: records, covers, call numbers and copies, with ISBN import to move fast.
• Search: by title, author, subject or level, with filters to find the right book in seconds.
• Loans and returns: loans per reader, renewals and full history.
• Library cards: linked to the students and staff already registered in SciAut Educ, with no re-entry.
• Reminders: automatic overdue notices by email or notification.
• Digital resources: PDFs, videos and links available online, according to each student’s class.

The result: a known collection, tracked loans and digital resources finally stored in the same place as the books.

Conclusion

Automating a library does not require a major technology project, but it does require method: a sorted collection, clear rules and a tool that tracks loans for you. That is how every book you buy actually gets read. Discover SciAut Biblio and request a demo for your school.

Sources

• 70% of 10-Year-Olds now in Learning Poverty (The State of Global Learning Poverty: 2022 Update) — World Bank, UNESCO, UNICEF and partners, 2022
• PASEC 2019: reading and mathematics levels of primary pupils (in French) — Government of Benin, 2022
• Updated IFLA-UNESCO School Library Manifesto endorsed by the UNESCO Information for All Programme — IFLA, 2025
• IFLA School Library Guidelines, 2nd revised edition — IFLA, 2015