Marble Falls ISD's WebCollection Plus

I went out in search of a third school library OPAC to review and started by searching through other school districts in the Austin area. Apparently, Destiny, the system used in Leander ISD and at St. Andrews School, is the popular choice, with it being used in Pflugerville, Hays, Dripping Springs, Georgetown, Eanes, and Lake Travis. Like AISD, Round Rock uses iBistro. I found this very curious, seeing the I thought iBistro was so much better than Destiny.

Luckily, I was able to visit with Megan Cooper, Library Services Director for Leander ISD, and asked her why the district chose Destiny. She told me she was on the selection committee the year Destiny was chosen, a few years back when she was the librarian at Vista Ridge High School and before the district level library position was created. She said that Destiny was her distant second choice. She liked the SIRSI system (iBistro) better than Destiny, but it was much more expensive. I'm not so surprised, seeing that iBistro has so many more features than Destiny does. In Destiny's defense, she explained that Destiny was the only product the committee looked at which was created for school libraries specifically and that Follett is good about updating the software and offering support with it. All interesting information, but I still like iBistro better.

So on I searched, but not very successfully, for another school OPAC system. The library websites for San Marcos High School, the two San Marcos junior highs, Manor High School, Manor Middle School, and Bastrop Middle School all mention nothing about an on-line catalog, while the "Library" link on the Bastrop High School website is dead. They can't all still be using a card catalog, could they? The pictures of the libraries on their websites look like they have nice modern furniture and things. But why wouldn't the OPAC be on their websites? Are some digital catalogs not web-based?

Lago Vista ISD appears to have one secondary school library for the middle and high school, and the website does have a link to a library catalog that might be called Lincoln, but alas, clicking the link brings me to a "server not found" message. D'oh! This is getting frustrating...

And then finally, success! Out at Marble Falls High School, home of the fighting Mustangs, they use a library OPAC called WebCollection Plus, which like Destiny, is published by Follett. And like Destiny, the Welcome page is half blank. It's similar to Destiny in other ways as well, offering searches by keyword, title, author, subject, series, and call number.

Then the choices get a little more interesting. You can do a Power search, the advanced search feature, as well as a Limiters search, which lets you limit the publishing year, reading level, interest level, and types of media. It also allows searches by AR (Accelerated Reader) and Lexile levels, which might be very helpful, depending on how you feel about those reading systems. I'm ok with AR as long as it's voluntary for the kids, but I'm not such a huge fan of the Lexile system. It's a way of defining reading levels for books and testing kids to match them with books on their appropriate level. But I know that a book like Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick had a Lexile level of 1000, while The Giver by Lois Lowry had a score of 760, a major difference. But Freak the Mighty is a very simple story; it just happens to have a character in it who's unusually brilliant and uses lots of big, fancy words. Meanwhile, the themes in The Giver are much more complex, even if the vocabulary used to describe those ideas is simple.

Anyway, I tried my now-default Keyword search of Bronte and got much better results than I did using Destiny: internet sites, novels, biographies, criticism, a film. The basic search results tell you the format type, title, author, year, call number, and status (if the book is in or out). When I click on a specific copy of Jane Eyre, then I'm offered features like adding it to my bookbag, or placing the book on hold/reserve.

All in all, although it may not be as fancy as iBistro, WebCollection Plus appears to be much better than Destiny, at least in my humble opinion. So why is Destiny the popular choice for most of the school districts in our area?