OPAC Chit-chat

Here's my main criteria when looking at OPACs - can I find what I need? Most OPACs these days are pretty user-friendly, so when it comes to comparing them, I start to get into design and the nitty-gritty of filtering. I love filtering my searches, and if the one I'm using doesn't offer me good filtering options, I get frustrated. But am I alone in that?

I turned to the librarian at my son's elementary school, Mrs. Callahan, to see how she felt about Follett's Destiny catalog, since I have never used it from the back end for more than circulation and acquisitions. Overall, she seems pretty happy with Destiny. Mrs. Callahan finds that at the elementary level, very few of the students use the catalog until she begins teaching it in third grade. She doesn't try before that because she discovered that second graders still aren't great spellers and since Destiny doesn't autocorrect in the way that Google does, it made using the catalog frustrating.

Mrs. Callahan tends to use the classic version of Destiny to introduce the catalog to students because it is so simple. Once they start to discover ebooks and audiobooks, they move to into using Discover. She really likes Quest as a book discovery tool, much like Goodreads, but she informed me that it's no longer being supported, meaning it is probably on its way out.

When I asked what she didn't like about Destiny, Mrs. Callahan said she wishes it was more interactive and wasn't so clunky. For example, there's a way for students to write book reviews and include them in the catalog, but there's no way to batch review them. You have to go through each review individually, which is time consuming.

Overall, she likes Destiny. She has used it for almost all of her career and hasn't had much of a chance to explore other options, but she doesn't feel the need. The department head isn't a librarian, so when decisions do need to be made, the head consults with the district's seven librarians. However, in the end they do not get to make the final decision.

My general sense from this chat and the discussion board is that Destiny is fine, and that if you don't have a reason to change, most people like it well enough to stick with it. I think that's perfectly acceptable, quite frankly. Making a change from one OPAC to another can be a challenge and time-consuming. Unless my budget changes or the product I use is going away, I don't know that I would want to change a product with which I was familiar and had no real problems. However, I think it's good practice to at least know what else is out there in case a problem with your OPAC arises.