Browser-based library management slashes costs: Follett's destiny[TM]: centralized district library management cuts hardware needs by 97%, technical manpower by 87% Greenville.

The "mantra" for the Greenville County (SC) School District, according to Superintendent William Harner, has been to "move this school district from "Good to Great!' and to upgrade media centers, upgrade labs and put instructional coaches in elementary and middle schools." Beyond simply modernizing, however, the district is also looking to benefit from money-saving efficiencies that new technologies will bring.

Though the district's final report card isn't in yet, it's clear that progress is being made across the board thanks to an aggressive grant-writing team, creative leadership and a dedicated staff and faculty. "It's an exciting time to be working here," says Robbie Van Pelt, Media Services Coordinator, Greenville County Schools. "The Board and superintendent have told me that my professional mandate is to get rid of outdated books and technology. What a great job!"

But while Van Pelt loves to be on the cutting edge, she's also concerned with getting the most bang for her buck. "I want to put my money toward things that are going to help our students--not just on hardware," Van Pelt says.

Greenville especially wanted to reduce the time and money it was spending maintaining its site-based library automation system. "We have 84 schools spread out over a 600 square mile area," Van Pelt recalls. "We have 15 technicians. With our elder, site-based system, we did upgrades two times a year, and our technicians had to drive all over this huge district to update the software," she said. "It took a lot of manpower to do that."

Low Maintenance, Easy to Use

To upgrade to meet the needs of the large district, Van Pelt chose Destiny[TM]--a 100% browser-based, centralized library management solution that could be administered district-wide from central servers. Destiny features circulation, cataloging, searching, reporting and management in one easy-to-use system, offering several advantages over alternative products, including:

* Destiny serves each school entirely through the browser 

* No workstation applications to install

* No costly, time-consuming site visits to fix problems

* Updates instantly go into effect for every site

* No terminal services costs or complexities

* Destiny is immediately available to every user at every school 24/7

* Maintenance is all handled at the district server

"Huge Savings"

Thanks to Destiny, Greenville was able to reduce its manpower commitment for library automation by 87%, and its hardware commitment by 97%. "Now we're running on two file servers, with two people," Van Pelt says. "That in and of itself is going to be a huge savings in my opinion."

Dr. Lonnie Luce, the district's executive director of education technology services, agrees. "Maintenance and time savings with technicians was one of the biggest things we realized," he said.

Another source of savings for the district is a cut in the amount of hardware devoted to library management. "I had to spend quite a bit every year just to keep up our file servers," Van Pelt says. "With Destiny, I don't think we will have to purchase them as often. It's going to free up my budget to buy the things we really want."

Also, since the solution is totally browser-based, all components are accessible from any computer with a web browser, at any time. So if a media specialist needs to run some circulation reports from home, for example, no problem. If they want to do cataloging, this can be done from any Internet-connected computer.

Students, teachers and parents also get around-the-clock access to district library resources via the web. "You can give users different access levels, so students or parents can go in and look at records," Van Pelt says. "As one of our media specialists said, students were always coming down to her to find out about fines or books due. Now they can go to the computer to pull up that information."

Easy, Powerful, District-Wide Reporting

Generating district-wide reports with Destiny is easier and faster, Van Pelt says. "I can run district reports any time I want to. Before, I would have to email all media specialists and ask them to run circulation reports or collection age reports at all 84 locations and then ask them to email or fax the results to me," Van Pelt said.