​Schools Catalogue Information Service (SCIS)

In 2024, the Schools Catalogue Information Service SCIS celebrated 40 years of supporting school libraries. Since 1984, SCIS has become an essential tool for schools across Australia and beyond, helping libraries to deliver curated, accessible, and high-quality resources to their students.

Today, 78% of Australian schools rely on SCIS. In 2023–24, SCIS created 40,000 new catalogue records - including 11,000 that were direct requests from schools. These records, along with others from the SCIS database, were downloaded 32 million times, underscoring SCIS’s huge impact.

SCIS was created to ease the admin load on teacher librarians, allowing them to focus on what matters most: helping students build information literacy. What started as a revolutionary idea delivered via microfiche, has transformed over four decades into an on-demand online service that plays a vital role in ensuring libraries run smoothly and efficiently.

SCIS’s role has expanded beyond cataloguing with it now offering professional learning, the popular library journal Connections, and innovative tools like Authority Files – keeping libraries at the forefront of student learning and growth. Today, SCIS’s mission remains the same: to help school libraries give students access to credible, curated information that builds their critical thinking and lifelong learning skills.

The 2024 customer survey showed that 95% of users are satisfied with SCIS – praising its accuracy, organisation, and how much time it saves. One user summed it up: “SCIS has transformed the way we manage our library resources. What used to take hours now takes minutes, allowing us to focus on supporting students.”

In a time filled with misinformation, school libraries are key to helping students make sense of it all. SCIS is committed to supporting quality library services and will be a trusted partner for schools worldwide for years to come.