Colleen

Colleen

April 28, 2014 To: Principal & District Administrators From: Colleen Simpson

Dear Building Principal & District Administrators,

I’m writing to you as we are undergoing the process of choosing a new cataloging system for the school library. As there has not been a change in the Online Public Access Catalog system in over a decade, it is time to consider a new system that is more appropriate for the changes in both the technology and media needs in the district and the approach to the community use of the library/media center.

In discussions with the previous librarian, it was her understanding that the current system was chosen based on its ability to communicate with our previous student data system Rediker, which is no longer the case. We have been using Concourse Library Automation, a service of BookSystems for quite some time. When researching this system it is evident that it is not designed for school libraries, BookSystems has Atrium for those purposes which we are not using. I understand that previous district administrators were looking to cut costs as much as possible, however this program no longer fits our needs.

I would like to propose that we adopt Destiny Library Manager by Follett. The first reason for adoption would be Follett’s acquisition of Aspen last year, our districtwide student data system. After nearly two years of using Aspen, teachers, students, administrators and parents have fully adapted to the system and Destiny will be integrated soon.

While cost was a factor in the last decision for adoption of Concourse, and I recognize that our subscription is very inexpensive at $725 per school year, it does not meet all the changing needs of our library. As we start to consider the possibilities for a catalog that goes beyond just the high school and also incorporates the long outdated middle school, Destiny offers a lot more school appropriate options. Also that price is deceiving as we are only subscribing to the most basic of services in Concourse and the cataloging program eZCat. At this point we do not even had their WebOPAC service so our catalog is limited to one computer in the high school library. If one of our goals in the district is to provide our students with open access to the collection, the catalog should be available at all times and from students’ homes or mobile devices. Even if we were to stay with the Booksystems product, we would need to make some full scale changes with this vendor.

After meeting with several school librarians in neighboring districts and from an independent school, it is clear that the most student friendly service is Destiny Library Manager. Like any system there are always add-ons and support systems that we may or may not decide are useful to our purposes. However, many of the services and vendors we currently use are separate, costs us money from a variety of sources and do not streamline the budget in any manner. Our Destiny subscription could include a PreK-12 circulation, cataloging, inventory and report function for our school libraries, easier access and fluency in searches, and free mobile app for users that supports out movement towards BYOD in the district. One of the most important features in Destiny that is more user friendly than Concourse is the direct connection to Follett’s Titlewave, a collection development tool and Titlewise, a collection analysis tool. The middle school has not had a full collection inventory since 2006 and while the high school collection was assessed two years ago, a more comprehensive analysis and development tool is necessary as we look to modify and update the system in the coming years, particularly with the opening of a new middle school in two years and a remodel of the high school media center.

Other features that would be great for students, educators and our school community alike would be the access to eBook content, more up-to-date and user-friendly search functions and even social networking features. We can also tie the CCSS standards to various parts of our collection should we choose to add this. In looking at these features, as well as the Alliance Products that support the system for more accurate MARC cataloging, it’s clear that we are working with many different operations that are pulling at the budget in a variety of directions. We could also include some of the hardware and bar code systems that are a part of the Follett system. All together, these services would cost roughly $1500 per year. While this may seem like a large jump in pricing, last year’s AV/Technology, Contract Services included a budget for $3500, $2775 which was not spent.

It is time to move out catalog and collection system into the present and make it school appropriate. Our district vision this year included statements that we wanted to incorporate more media education literacy into the curriculum, not having a 24/7 OPAC is surely counterproductive to this notion. We cannot fully teach our students research skills that include properly evaluating our materials in the library if there is only one stationary computer with access to the OPAC. Besides the need to adopt a more student-centered cataloging system, Destiny Library Manager can be adopted by students in grades PK-12 in user friendly model that Concourse does not offer, including a visual catalog search option.

Finally, in reviewing last year’s budget it is clear that we have been spending over $5000 on Amazon books, which have to be cataloged separately using eZcat and result in lost productivity time for the librarian and supervision for students in the library. By adopting Destiny Library Manger, we can order most of our books from Follett and they will be cataloged immediately for us as a result of our purchases.

It is clear after close analysis that Destiny Library Manager is the best system for our school and district to use that will work for all students in our district over time, even if we limited the collect ion by school and let each school have their own catalog, we’d be more unified as a district and be more consistent in our teaching of research skills and more easily be able to teach students how to better analyze sources if we didn’t have to teach new catalog skills at each institution through the years.

Thank you for consideration in the matter and I look forward to speaking with you about this exciting opportunity to update our systems.

Sincerely, Colleen Simpson <span style="font-family: Cambria,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Library Media Specialist.