My Interview about OPAC systems

For this week's assignment, I talked to S., an elementary school librarian I observed last semester. She's used two OPAC systems before, Winnebago and Destiny. When they decided to replace Winnebago, Destiny was the only system they looked at. We discussed the pros and cons of Dentiny. Here's what she had to say:

Pros of Destiny:

• Simple to catalog new books
• Follett orders can just be uploaded
• The catalog is accessible from anywhere
• Destiny Quest: kids can create profiles, see book covers, share reviews, locate web sources, and put books on hold
• Easy to print out barcodes and labels
• Webpath Express (for extra money)- Internet search filter - gives grade-level appropriate resources
• Patron reports, patron history, patron entry, patron updates are all easy
• Late slips can be generated automatically
• Great access to circulation stats to give to administrators
• New dashboard tab shows daily and monthly circulation
• Titlewave ordering is easy
• Can keep a running list of items to buy
• Great fill records
• Books look great with mylar and barcodes

Cons of Destiny:

• Destiny Quest has to be actively monitored - the kids can get silly
• Catalog is not very forgiving of misspelled words (she thinks there may be an option to improve this, but she doesn't have it right now); better when it shows the book covers for hints
• Can't email overdue notices
• The homepage could be more visually friendly
• When a patron has a message, the Destiny screen freezes. You have to actively watch the screen.
• It doesn't count the items checked in (like Winnebago did)
• Expensive