Alma vs Oliver

Alma has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.

Oliver is a library management solution for schools, education departments, and their communities. It supports cataloguing, circulation, acquisitions, borrower access, and booking loans for music or equipment. Students can discover resources through personalised recommendations, while staff can create pre-built or customised reports on usage, borrowing, overdue items, and digital-resource engagement, with automatic scheduling. Oliver integrates with school management systems, learning platforms, content providers, and authentication tools through APIs, library protocols, and single sign-on. Softlink offers hosted and on-premises deployment, and says the service works through an internet connection without workstation installation. Hosted service includes daily backups, managed updates and patching, plus dedicated technical support with service-level agreements. Softlink lists ISO 27001 and ISO 27018, GDPR compliance, IRAP-compliant data centres, endpoint protection, firewalls, and vulnerability scanning. Pricing is by quote. Support includes local help, learning resources, a 24/7 community portal, webinars, and user groups.