Kim

Ms. Christine Johnson, Superintendent Northborough-Southborough School District Parkerville Road Southborough, MA 01776

Dear Christine,

In conjunction with the district-wide technology plan, the current online public access catalog (OPAC) was evaluated to determine if the current program best fills the needs of the high school. Destiny by Follett School Solutions has been in use for the last five years. After extensive research and evaluation, it has been determined that Algonquin should continue with Destiny.

The Library-Technology Committee developed a list of criteria that they determined was most important when selecting/evaluating the OPAC: 1. Ease of use for the school community 2. Ability to expand to accommodate new initiatives 3. Integration with student management system 4. Return on Investment

Destiny is an intuitive program that allows patrons to search the catalog easily for physical materials, eBooks, and websites. Users can set the view to allow them to use a basic, power, or visual search. These accommodations allow patrons to access the card catalog in a manner that is most useful for them.
 * Ease of use for the school community**

When purchasing books through the Follett system, cataloging is completed in a matter of minutes, allowing the library staff to spend more time on instruction, collaboration, and collection development.

Presently, Destiny is used in the other school districts that feed into Algonquin and the continuity allows patron to search all 10 libraries in the system. In addition, as students move through the district the interface which helps provide a smooth transition to the high school.

In the last two years, the school as a whole has started to use Destiny as a means to checkout textbooks to students. Using the students' id numbers and the scanner, this system has streamlined the system and provided more accountability. Now all of the textbook information is contained in one account, so when it is time for students to apply for parking privileges, graduate, or move during the year, all resources assigned to the student can be viewed in one place.
 * Ability to expand to accommodate new initiatives**

Destiny also provides extension packs that allow for the tracking of equipment. With the increased amount of technology that the Library is responsible for tracking, this may be a useful component to consider.

There is a need to track students coming in and out of the library. It is possible that if the OPAC was integrated with the student management system, that this would be possible.

Currently the school uses iPass, with mixed results. There have been discussions about converting to Aspen or X2. Since this conversion is to take place over the summer, it would not make sense to change the OPAC until such time. If Aspen is adopted Destiny integrates completely with it and would allow for better recordkeeping.
 * Integration with the student management system**

The current cost of Destiny is $700. Although other programs were somewhat cheaper, the investment in person-hours to convert to the system, train personnel, and re-teach students would outweigh the cost savings. In addition, the intended switch to Aspen would allow the school to further benefit from features that we could not access due to the incompatibility of the systems.
 * Return on Investment**

The district is in the process of putting a wide variety of initiatives into place and it is the suggestion of the Library-Technology Committee to maintain our current OPAC.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me.

Sincerely,

Kimberly Honey