Does FOLIO is good for more than 500+ school libraries ?

Hello All,

I want to discuss this

Is it possible for the system to manage more than 500 school libraries, all connected to a single network and one system, not a branch?

let’s said as a server and client software

Yes, FOLIO is a multi-tenancy system, you may create 500+ tenants that are completely separate from each other.

FOLIO is a client-server system where the browser is the client.

They would each have to be on their own server, unless they are sharing patrons. There is no way to separate patrons from school to school. If you are okay with a single patron file for all 500 schools, that staff in every school can access, then you could probably use a single server otherwise you need a separate server for each group of patrons you want to keep separate.

By separate server, might you mean separate tenant?

I think there are effectively three options depending upon what overlap is needed between each library.

• one instance of FOLIO and one tenant for when patrons, catalogues etc are shared
• one share instance of FOLIO and a tenant per library, for when no patrons, catalogue etc is shared between libraries
• an instance of FOLIO and a tenant per library, for when no patrons, catalogue etc is shared between libraries

For the options where there is a tenant per library, then any networking (which I assume to mean inter library lending, shared catalogues etc) would need to be extra software on top of FOLIO

Yes, I mean tenant.

I think the catalog is a lot more flexible than the patron files. Discovery systems can take records from multiple tenants and build a single catalog, or separate out part of a single tenant into a separate catalog.

The primary issue is the patron groups.

As i see the replies may i need to clear what am looking for :

There will be main center of data ( books , students , libraries locations , libraries usernames password … etc ) where all located in the main server .

The other libraries connect to the main server for data , each library have different books , students … so they need to insert on the system their local books ex ( hey main server i have this book where it is in your data on my local library ) so each library connect to the main server and every library have difference books , but the books should be in the main server .

Hope this clear enough .

It sounds like you want to build a bibliographic utility. I think this is the sort of thing that FOLIO could be adapted to become. We have had discussions of such a project, but it is not set up to do that now.

I think you are describing a single catalogue and a single set of patrons shared amongst all of the libraries.

Is that what a fair reflection of what is wanted?

If so, then this suggests a single server and single tenant where all of the data is shared.

If instead, there is a need for these things to be administrated separately and yet have an overall catalogue as well, then you would want multiple tenants (and those could be split between servers if wanted) and additional software to support a union catalogue.

As @Lloyd_Chittenden suggested above, FOLIO does not currently support multi-tenant consortia or union catalogues.