[CALIBK12] HIT: Follett's Destiny (VERY LONG)
Millam, Joy
jmillam at pylusd.org
Wed Feb 4 12:15:06 PST 2009
Responses to the Destiny question were varied-some love it, some don't.
Here are the responses and some responses are from LM_Net's archive as
well(October 2008). Compared to what we have (a primarily business
library firm, this sounds so nice-I'd just like to click 1-2 times to
get what I want not 4-8 clicks for basic info). My apologizes for
cross-posting.
Thanks to all who responded.
Joy (my signature/title is at the end of the message)
We have it in our district, and I LOVE it. Previously, we used Athena,
and I would not go back to it for ten free cruises.
We do have a union catalog-I don't think you can have it any other
way-and there are some issues with that, but I'm slowly plodding my way
through the process of merging multiple records for the same title into
one.
I know you don't handle the textbooks in your school, but if your
district/school ever lets you do that, the transfer process between
sites is so easy in Destiny. Previously, we had to delete textbooks
from our Athena, ship them out, and the new school had to add them to
their Athena.
In Destiny, if a patron leaves Valencia and goes to Esperanza, the
library record goes with them, including your unreturned items. The
same is true with fines and textbooks (if you did them). That has
helped with accountability at all sites.
Creating a library web page is a piece of cake using Destiny. I can add
a link, edit one or delete one in less than a minute. Check out my
site: http://destiny.dsusd.k12.ca.us/common/welcome.jsp?site=125.
I'm a strong believer in Destiny because of all the "pros" and there
aren't many "cons" that I've experienced.
My district switched to Follett Destiny 2 years ago. It works very
well and any problems we have are within the district (patron records
not being updated and then being updated in duplicate). We pay $5,000 a
year for maintence, which I think is for 5 schools but the top librarian
may be wrong about that. I don't find their tech assistance very
helpful, but that's always been the case. The manual that comes with
it is extensive and we rarely do more than the basic. It is terrific
for reports, although the system of creating overdue notices on half a
sheet of paper seems to have gone. A whole sheet per student seems
wasteful.
Ours doesn't seem set up to view patron history, which would be helpful
from a teacher stand point. As a former public librarian, I appreciate
all the privacy issues, but now I have to give grades and recommend
other books and it would be very helpful to know.
It's good that it is web based. We have access to the patrons and
catalogs of the other 4 schools in the district so we can do better with
Inter Library Loan. We have TitlePeek which means we can see the front
covers of the book, which is very useful for students trying to locate
different titles.
With luck, we are figuring out how to have patron photos uploaded,
which is also a great improvement.
I love Destiny:
-Being web-based there are no workstation issues.
-We can operate the program from anywhere. I can even login from home
to work on cataloging or other tasks.
-I also like the TitlePeek feature which lets the kids see the book and
read reviews or excepts.
-Ours is set up so kids can login with their ID #s and see what they
have checked out (including textbooks) and they can place holds.
-Teachers can log in and create reading lists that can be made public
for students to see.
-Patrons can even submit reviews that can be added to the catalog
records.
-I have also found it easier to add AR information to titles than the
old system.
-I can see the titles in other libraries in the district and use their
MARC records to add copies -Patrons can search all of the district's
libraries at one time and request interlibrary loans -We can transfer
textbooks easily from school to school -It can be setup to automatically
update patron information from systems like Aeries and SASI -It has a
database of textbook records similar to Alliance+ ... and there are many
other cool features
I don't like the reports. It seems more difficult to get some
information and the library techs complain about them. It may just be a
matter of adjusting to a new system. The startup training was pretty
weak too. I could have learned everything in a day or two at my own
pace instead of four days.
I don't know the total cost. The start-up cost last year was pretty
steep (in the tens of thousands) since a new server had to be purchased
and set up. I do know that the yearly cost to the district is higher
than the annual maintenance of the Catalog/Circ + and Textlink but I
think it is well worth the cost. Our district pays for it out of some
technology fund.
It makes more sense to have the entire district on the system rather
than individual sites. Destiny allows district people to see inventory
information for all of the schools and they can see which sites are
losing more textbooks and library books. Potentially that could save
the district money by minimizing unnecessary duplication and by allowing
them to see what collection techniques work best.
Stockton Unified uses Destiny for both libraries and textbbooks. I
love it - but it is the only system I have known so I cannot compare it
to another. I understand it is expensive - but I am not sure of the
price because the district pays for it. The catalog is individually
managed by the site librarian or clerk, but patrons can access all
catalogs to see what is available. We do not have a formal
intra-district loan policy so books are not traded amongst the schools.
Boy-- my district library clerk would have a fit if she knew I was
writing this but here it goes:
I like the potential of Destiny
I like the reporting features of destiny
my tech, likes the cataloging ease of Destiny
I like the usability with regards to student uploads
I like that it tracks/maintains both library and textbook entries.
I like that it is web-based so can be accessed, if desired, from
anywhere
BUT with that said, here are my concerns:
If the server goes down, you lose functionality even though you have
"destiny remote" ... it never works right and you risk the problems that
we had without access for 6 workdays. Hand writing all entries then
keying them in later.
If the district doesn't provide adequate tech support with experienced,
knowledgeable and capable staff who also knows XML programming language,
you will have issues.
Provide training to all library staff not just the techs. We didn't get
adequate training and so had problems later on.
It is expensive and my district makes the library pay for it even though
we use it for textbooks.
Make sure the district uploads batch files of new students daily and new
courses for both semesters.
Go see it at other districts.
Our District does an amazing job
Slow and steady integration with plenty of planning and thinking about
the problems is the best way to head off the level of frustration we
encounter with it.
Be open to your library staff suggestions.
I think I better shut up now or I just might get into lots of trouble.
Not supposed to say anything negative about it in this district or about
the tech office at district level or will get into major trouble. Fun.
What I like:
1. The ability to see books and debts outstanding at other sites within
our district.
2. I can see everyone's middle names - I like names.
What I don't like about the program:
1. You have to think backwards. You must make a conscious decision about
whether or not you are checking in and tell the program first.
2. There is too much white space on the screen. You cannot see the
student's list of books out.
3. It takes any where from 3 to 25 seconds for the program to complete a
command.
4. You cannot checkout textbooks and library books at the same time,
they are two separate modules and they do not communicate with each
other in any way. So not only do you have to think about what your end
result will be, you have to think about what type of item is in front of
you, textbook, library book or asset and check it in or check it out.
5. This roll over has cost many hours of time away from the staff and
students as I try to accomplish all the projects directed at us, because
of the new program. (I am the only library/textbook person for 875
students and 45 staff, 10,000 library books and 6,000 textbooks, 7 hours
a day) 6. 1000's of textbooks and information was lost and I have to go
through every textbook I can find and input the information.
7. The program is laborious and wastes time (yours, staff's and
students) and is very complicated to use. Since I never saw another
program, I can't tell you what would have been better.
Make sure that your tech and Destiny work together so that everyone can
clean up their files BEFORE transferring information. Each week, I get
several reports from the district office, generated by Destiny reps, on
all the incorrect information, but really no instructions. Some of these
reports are 300 pages! I feel this should have one year lead time before
the actual transfer occurs.
It is better than anything besides Follett I have had in years. Mostly
good.
We have been using the Destiny program for approximately 3 years now --
we love it.
When Follett bought Sagebrush products, we knew that the days of Athena
were
numbered, so we started looking for a replacement. Destiny was one of
the six that
we looked at. It is, indeed, a very impressive system. Unfortunately,
even with the
current customer discount it was still by FAR the most expensive program
we looked
at. We eliminated it from further consideration on that basis. We also
eliminated
the one that was FAR cheaper than the others. That left us with four
programs that,
over a ten-year-period, had very similar costs. We figured that on the
basis of the
initial purchase price plus any conversion costs plus any mandatory
training costs
plus the tech support out 10 years (based on current price).
We are switching to Destiny in January (from Circ. Plus- which I hate)
- but it is
so much more user friendly - I'm sure there is a way to turn off the
ability for
parents and students to reserve books from home. There are tons of
different
settings in one of the menus (sorry, I can't be more specific - I've had
the
training, but not the actual program yet.)
Hope this helps - I think you'll like it.
_____________________
We love Destiny. It's intuitive and easy to use. I don't have any
experience with
circ plus, so I can't do a recommendation there.
We switched from InfoCentre to Destiny in August. I love it. It is
very user friendly. Destiny hosts our server so we are not responsible
for the server's upkeep, maintanence, etc.
Training was thorough and actually enjoyable. We had onsite training so
we were actually using our own data.
Cataloging could not be easier. You are able to search by ISBN for the
marc records from the vendor and other Z sources, and then import the
record you want. It takes all of 30 seconds per book.
There is a feature called "Back Office" where all reports are generated.
I like that you can schedule reports to be run at the same time every
day. I run overdue notices every morning at 8am. I haven't figured out
how to turn it off for weekends and holidays. I just don't have to
print those when I get back. Printing barcodes and spine labels is also
done in the Back Office. I haven't had any problems with them yet.
Folett remote has been a lifesaver for us. We had a virus invasion on
the servers and had not access to Internet for a week. This module
allows you to check in/out materials and then upload the file when the
Internet comes back up.
The OPAC feature is also very user friendly. The homepage shows the
recently added new books and the top 10 most popular checked out books.
It has a feature that allows you to drag and drop titles into a list to
print (by MLA citations or Call number) for research.
Overall, I love Destiny. It has been trouble free up to this point.
I hate Destiny (I am biased!)---it's not very user friendly, it confuses
patron and
book barcodes unless you include a "P" or "T" (for patron and title) in
front of
the barcode, it's reports are cumbersome and confusing, it's not very
flexible, you
have start a report on one page and go to a second page to see if it's
ready . . .
Most of all, their tech help is HORRIBLE. I spend tons of time on hold.
I'll give you a short version of some of the things I like/dislike
Cause I have a full load today, but I would be glad to answer any
Questions you have later.
Likes:
Processing is a DREAM!
The reports are wonderful! And you can set up a report to process on a
schedule LOVE IT!
Love that we can see if from home and that we can see other campuses
There are TONS of options--so many it is hard to know where to start
Dislikes:
Visually it is uninteresting...we thought an upgrade would mean it would
look nicer for the viewer
We have had a hard time getting GOOD training from Follett
Some things are hard to find and the "help" is not as easy to use as
they lead you to believe
HATE that they did away with the bookbag. The book lists are verrry
DIFFICULT to use
Seems like they have tried too hard to be too generic both in their
styling and the terminology
Here's my take on our switch from Follett Circulation Plus/Catalog Plus
to Destiny:
Tulsa Public Schools is a fairly large school system with 42,000
students, and
Destiny in 86 sites, including a Media (centralized video library) site.
We ended up with Destiny because of their new release in July that has
Destiny
Quest, the new interactive student interface, and because we would
eventually have the capability
to put our Destiny within a product called SharpSchool. (Every teacher
in the district will
have a webpage using SharpSchool, and our libraries will use it for the
homepage for Destiny
instead of the actual Destiny homepage provided by Follett.)
How has it been received:
Really, really well.
Here's what the librarians (98%, anyway) like about it:
-Nightly loads from our student management system.
-Checkouts and fines follow the students. (first week of school those
high school
students were scrambling to find their middle school leftover
checkouts!)
-Easy cataloging (one person added 200 books in a couple of hours
becuase now we
have a -centralized database, and all she ended up doing was adding
copies to the
centralized database.
-Easy learning curve for library staff, including student assistants in
our high
schools.
-Seeing what everyone else in the district has in the collection without
having to
check each library individually
Here's that the students like about it:
-seeing the covers of the books
-logging in to see what they have checked out
-writing reviews about their favorite books
-seeing the top 10 circulated books
-using the shelf browse feature (really, really, cool!)
Here's what some teachers like about it:
-booking their videos online for themselves instead of having to rely on
someone
else to do it.
Here's what the district tech gurus like about it:
-runs on a SQL platform, for which we already had products using a
license and had
someone with expertise.
-runs virtually problem free. (occasional glitches here and there,
nothing major)
-updates happen one time to a centralized server (not 86 times to a
server in each
of the buildings)
-tech staff looks good to their boss and to the director of
libraries (very
important!)
Here's what the district library administration likes about it:
-ability to see what everyone is doing. (how many checkouts allowed,
whether they
charge fines, whether they have books that we need to round up for
various reasons)
-centralized reporting feature. (don't have to rely on 86 different
people to send
in stats so we can pull a monthly report together.
-when someone needs to order barcodes and doesn't remember how, I can
run the
report and we can look at it simultaneously.
Not everyone likes everything about the system.
-Some LMS don't like the fact that the Destiny Quest uses only keywords.
They feel
the need to stay in the original electronic catalog format (we don't use
OPAC term anymore
because it isn't used on the standardized test).
-Some LMS don't like Destiny Quest because kids "take too long on it.
They'd be
there all day if we let them."
-All of us had to switch to using the student's ID number, and some
schools had
never done that.
-some LMS don't like sharing with other schools. The
interlibrary loan capability
has them stymied, and they can't figure out how to bypass it. (there is
an option
to decline any hold, but they just don't want to be bothered with it.)
-Some LMS don't like for kids to be able to put holds or requests for
books that
are at their own library. The LMS doesn't want to go retrieve the book
for the
kids, she wants the kids to get books off the shelves for themselves.
As I said, cataloging is really easy. It's my favorite feature. It uses
Alliance
Plus and Z Sources automatically, whereas in the previous version we had
to make
that distinction before looking for a title.
Joy Millam
YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers Committee Member (2010)
District Library Coordinator/Library Media Teacher
Valencia High School
500 N. Bradford Ave.
Placentia, CA 92870
714-996-4970 x3250
jmillam at pylusd.org
http://www.vhstigers.org/library/mrs_millam.jsp?rn=1816497
http://booktalksandmore.pbwiki.com
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