This document discusses implementing the Follett Destiny library management system in the Nashoba Regional School District. It argues that Destiny would help the district meet its goals of educating students to their fullest potential and providing resources and instruction to develop 21st century skills. Specifically, it notes that Destiny would automate the card catalogs in two schools that currently lack automation, giving those students equal access and opportunity to learn important research skills. It outlines several beneficial features of Destiny, such as integrating websites and databases into the catalog, and concludes that Destiny is the right choice for the district to promote student achievement.

1. Follett Destiny
Nashoba Regional School District
April, 2009
District Mission: To educate all students to their fullest
potential.
Library Media Mission: To provide a welcoming and
stimulating environment with a variety of reliable
resources where students and teachers can research,
collect and critically analyze and synthesize
information.
Tracy Landry

2. The Library Media Center:
What do we do for the NRSD
learning community?
 We provide the best, most relevant resources
for student research and learning.
 We provide guidance for students looking for
fiction and non-fiction materials.
 We provide instruction in 21st
Century Skills so
that our students are information literate.
 We connect the library to the curriculum to
create an information rich environment in which
students can locate, evaluate and synthesize
information.

3. How can we do better?
• Provide equitable access of library materials to all
of our students, classroom teachers and library
teachers.
• Provide an Online Patron Access Catalog (OPAC)
that is up-to-date, easy to use, and attractive so
that all members of the learning community can
locate appropriate learning resources.
A new OPAC will enable the library teachers in
the district to teach 21st
century information
retrieval.

4.  Two out of the seven schools in our district
do NOT have an automated library. The
students find books using an old fashioned
card catalog.
• These students are at risk for falling behind
in information literacy skills.
• These students do not have fair and
equitable access to library materials.

5. What is the solution?
 Follett’s Destiny Library Management.
With Destiny, we can centralize all of
the districts library/media resources.
• We can automate the two libraries to
bring them into the 21st
century; providing
valuable information literacy skills to the
students and teachers.
• Save money by sharing resources.

6. Why migrate from our current
system?
 Destiny offers several options that our current system
does not:
 Ability to include web-sites and databases in the OPAC.
 Students will become used to seeing ‘good’ web-sites,
which will aide in evaluating resources in the future.
 Leveled Reading Information so that students and teachers
can locate books to match a reading level.
 State Standards Service – allows staff and students to
browse by MA Standards to find web-sites and books that
correlate to standards and grade levels.
 Promotes information inquiry and critical thinking skills by
adding an “explore” option which offers students different
resources.

7. Why? continued
 TitlePeek – a services that looks much like Amazon.com;
the information could include a picture of the cover,
summary, excerpts from the book and reviews.
 The exciting part is that students and teachers can
interact, and write reviews and comments! An
excellent 21st
century/web 2.0 skill.
 Offers alternative search strategies when a search
yields no results. (demonstrated on slide 10)
 Promotes resources sharing by allowing searches of
the OPACs throughout the district – which could save
the district money!

8.  There are several features of this system that make
Destiny a great choice for our district.
• Each library teacher can customize their system to fit
the needs of their learning community.
• This is an example of a larger school district’s Online
Patron Access Catalog.
Notice that each
school has a link
to a unique OPAC
for the needs of
each learning
community.

9. Elementary School OPAC
This catalog is set up for an elementary school. Students can search
in a variety of ways, including visual search.
This tab can be
used to conduct a
visual search
Students can conduct
a series search, to
browse titles in a
series

10.  Here is the example of alternative search strategies:
There are ‘clickable’ links
that bring the student to
appropriate resources
A search for ‘life cycle’ yielded this result:

11. Search in one or several of the district’s school
OPAC
Choose which
OPACs you whish
to search.

12. Details in the search results offer further exploration options.
These are clickable
links for further
exploration.

13. Some technical information
 According to the ‘White Paper”
received from the Follett, the
bandwidth required during peak
hours, for the entire district is .
15Mbps.
 Because it is a web-based application, it does
not use a substantial amount of bandwidth.

14.  Destiny is the right choice for our district.
 In order to promote high student
achievement, each school needs an efficient,
easy to use, attractive OPAC.
• It is essential for the library teachers to be able to
promote/teach information literacy and reading
skills. This system is part of a larger plan to
educate our students to their fullest potential by
teaching them 21st
century information literacy
skills.