Case Study: Regional Western Australia Library Consortium achieves city‑level services for remote users and rapid growth with Civica's Spydus

Library users in remote LGAs accessing services and resources equaling those of larger city libraries

The Regional Western Australia Library Consortium faced an ageing, end-of-life library management system and the challenge of bringing small, remote local government libraries up to the same standard of service as larger city libraries across 1,800 km from Albany to the Pilbara. Working with vendor Civica and its Spydus platform, the consortium sought a scalable, affordable solution that provided centralised support, easy data migration and the ability to add many more libraries without prohibitive costs.

Civica delivered Spydus as a hub-based consortium model managed through Albany Public Library—Civica provided the platform and migration support while Albany handles contracts, subscriptions, training and local go-live assistance—enabling proven, simple data migrations, free cross-consortium reservations and instant membership at any site. The outcome: the consortium doubled from 17 to 34 libraries, serves about 138,000 citizens with 50 employees, and has clear, measurable capacity and cost-sharing to continue expanding.