Follett Software Company ‘Website Survey’:
I have a new appreciation for this company now that I have
visited their website and learned about the various features of their systems. Upon
opening the site, I was prompted to fill out a questionnaire on the
effectiveness of the website. I think surveys such as these really do help a
company tweak their sites, as well as gain information about their users, and
effectiveness of their access points. Here is an example of one of the
questions from their survey:
Please rate your satisfaction with the following areas of the Follett
Software Company website.
Overall layout of the site
Ease of navigation
Usefulness of information provided
Colors and design of the site
Amount of product information
Organization of information
Amount of time to load information or images
Amount of training and services information
Ease of finding contact information
Ease of finding the information you need
From this survey I feel that the company values
user-independence and flexibility in its clients, which (hopefully) translates
to its products, which in turn, are used by students. Destiny is a very
user-friendly, multi-access-point online catalogue in many schools. In the new
version of Destiny 10.0, there are 3 new features: Textbook Manager, Library
Manager, and Assets Manager, which seek to better organize and manage a Library
Program. These features may be an attempt by the company to roll out additional
features that some institutions have requested. I think the company is trying
to offer flexibility to its clients by offering a variety of services within
its packages.
History of
the Library Catalogue
Interesting to note that back in 1876,
that Charles Cutter identified the ‘Subject’ of a book as being one of the main objects to catalogue,
along with Title and Author. Even back then, along with organizing, managing
and advertising its collection, the vision of a library was to support research.
The original card catalogue did offer ‘flexibility’ although it was bound by
the technology of the time. I can still remember searching for books at the
community library, as well as my school, using the card catalogue. I can
vaguely remember the ‘subject’ cards and ‘title’ cards. I don’t recall there
being ‘author’ cards. Basically, we had to decide whether we knew a title or
not, and then go into the right set of drawers alphabetically, pencil and paper
in hand. It took much longer, and the
book was coveted when we found it. With fewer books around, and no ‘digital’
resources, we relied a lot on one or two reference items. No wonder our knowledge
base has increased exponentially in the last couple of decades! I remember the microfiche
system too, from my high school and university days. It was quicker because one
fiche contained several pages of data, but it put a strain on your eyes!
As a ‘teacher librarian wannabe’ I
really appreciate the technological advances in cataloguing. OPACs (featuring shared
library systems and Boolean indicators) increase the access points and motivation
for the users, rendering them more independent, and more apt to use the online
catalogue. User friendly interfaces such as Destiny Quest allow for independent
searches, which require less assistance by the teacher librarian. Remember waiting
in line to see the librarian when you had trouble locating a book from the card
catalogue, or a card itself? OPACs also reduce the manual entering of data for
the librarians. Hooray!
No comments:
Post a Comment