OPAC: Online Public Access Catalogs. Short interview with a library colleague

 

In a recent email chat with my colleague, Mark M., we discussed the pros and cons of several OPACS, and he shared his insight regarding Follett's Destiny system. Here are a few key points:

"As far as Destiny goes, there are 2 parts to the system that almost look like different websites:

1. Destiny "Back Office"-This is where I do the administrative librarian work in Destiny-checking in and out books, adding titles, uploading MARC records, running overdue notices and reports, circulation statistics, etc. Kids can also see a version of this to find books in a catalog, but it is ugly and outdated looking. I looks like a public library catalog with an overwhelming amount of text, sub categories, and options.

2. Destiny Discover-This is the new, hip, "Netflix-y" looking website which students can browse and place holds in. This is becoming a more popular search option in Destiny rather than having students using the Back Office Catalog. It is stripped down with big, beautiful covers and easier to navigate. It also has a lot of filters to have categories like "Most Popular Titles" and "Recently Added" which is harder to do in the back office version.

Frankly, having the two separate catalogs is a little clunky and Discover seems to be the future for Destiny, but they still seem to be developing it. I don't love many aspects of Destiny, but I will explain those in the Slides."

It seems that the big draw here is the Destiny Discover page, which is simple, and a bit flashy, and thus more likely to get the kids' attention. Having this tool can benefit your library program by:

-increasing engagement and, hopefully, circulation

-increasing overall library usership, and benefitting your return on investment status

-improving accessibility among a larger student and teacher audience through ease of use

Notes on "How Will COVID-19 Change Your Practice?"

 

The Allen and Gilbert article “How Will Covid-19 Change Your Practice” stood out to me at a very basic level, because our library is so far behind most. Allen and Gilbert write, “The library website is used daily by me and my students. It is accessed from within the library and from classrooms. The website is how students access the catalog and loads of digital resources. When I curate digital resources for teachers, they are found there as well.” We don’t have a library website, thus our students are not regularly (if at all) accessing databases for research. This is likely the result of never having a certified Library Media Specialist, and treating the library like a common space with a collection of books that is used for all kinds of testing. Not sure if this problem is endemic to urban, Title 1 schools, but it seems to be quite common throughout the Boston Public Schools (many don’t even have libraries at all). We have no technology in the library, not even a desktop computer. The collection is not yet electronically cataloged. So… we have a long way to go. And in reading this article, I realized that any attempts to budget and plan for a 21st century library learning space will have to start at a very basic level. I am in the process of bringing awareness to the issue via the school’s governing board and strategic planning committee, but sadly, it seems that only myself and the soon-to-retire library paraprofessional are the only ones concerned about it. Hoping for a better outcome if we are able to raise some awareness within the school community.

Allen, James and Gilbert, Jen. How Will COVID-19 Change Your Practice?

Pros and Cons of the Dewey Decimal System

 

The Dewey Decimal System (DDC) has been in use for well over 100 years, and is the most widely used library classification system in the world! But is it the best? What are some pitfalls? What are its strengths and weaknesses? To help us understand this hot library topic, let's look at some of the pros and cons, and then decide for yourself!

First, a little background (from What's So Great About the Dewey Decimal System, A Staff Report from "The Straight Dope" Science Advisory Board):

"Dewey’s innovation was to combine a numbering system (like at the British Museum) with classification by topic. However, the numbers didn’t indicate a shelf but rather a field of knowledge. Battles says, “Thus he joined the analytical simplicity of decimal numbers to an intuitive scheme of knowledge, one that would fluidly accommodate all the books ever written, and all the books that could be written as well.” Thus was born the Dewey Decimal Classification system...One of the beauties of Dewey’s system is that it provides an easy way to introduce new subjects–there have been lots of new subjects since 1876! The key was the use of decimals. Dewey began by establishing a broad division of knowledge into basic categories, to which numbers were then assigned–crudely put, these are the numbers to the left of the decimal point. That done, it was easy to add new subjects by dividing the original categories into progressively finer gradations — these are the numbers to the right of the decimal point. DDC is what today we’d call scalable — it has readily accommodated the explosion of knowledge since Dewey’s day."

Pros:

• It's a highly standardized system that is both organizationally sound, and also flexible.
• It's the most widely used method of library collection organization in the world- used by hundreds of countries.
• It allows for ongoing additions to the collection.
• 95% of all public and school libraries in the United States use it.
• It still holds up, more than a century after its development, even with massive expansion of  materials.

Cons:

• Melvil Dewey's character has been called into question, specifically with regard to his treatment of women and people of color.
• The classification system itself is accused of being biased on a few fronts. First, with regard to Black authors being classified under the "Colonialism" section, and second, for its religious bias toward Christian books and materials.
• Most colleges and government libraries use the Library of Congress Classification (LCC)
• Some argue that classifying books in this way is boring and doesn't encourage exploration of books