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Hi, We just spent the day with vendors from these 4 circ system companies, looking at their products. I'm looking for the pros and cons of each of these systems, if you have experience with them. We are looking into changing over from Winnebago's CIRC/CAT, which we all love. Thanks, Diane Our district switched to Alexandria last year after much research. We have been very happy with the product. It has an engaging, easy to use interface for our students and many great features for librarians. As with any change there is a learning curve, but the manual, email, and telephone tech support made the transition as easy as possible. It is a breeze to create pathfinders using the Explore component, which give students access to many resources from home. The Sneak Peak feature costs extra, but provides great info for users. Periodical circulation is much easier, as well. I made a chart with our important points in the first column, and each product in the next six columns, with the proper information in each cell. After we had all six presentations, Kathy and I got together and cut the list down to three. I've emailed those three a couple of times for more information, as questions come up. We went from Winnebago to Accent to Destiny within three years! Whew!!! Destiny has cleaner reports, but some are trickier to find and get; screen is cleaner and easier to read, returns are sorted by Dewey and fiction...I think; resource list feature is very nice, cataloging is six of one etc. You can grab records from within the district or the Follet data bank but there is advertising on the page which I hate, all barcodes from previous program DO NOT read and have to be keyed in until redo with 14 digits. ALso good for helping to weed, as our books with 2, 3, and 4 digits are the oldest in the collection. We looked at those four, plus Koha and L4U. Alexandria, Atriuum, and Koha made the final three, but Atriuum got there only because we had said we would have three. We will decide between Alexandria and Koha today or tomorrow. I had Alexandria for 6 years before being forced to change to Surpass. I started using Alexandria w/o any training and the only problems I had, and there were very few of them, was my ignorance. 18 months ago I was forced to switch to Surpass and not a day goes by that I don't wish for Alexandria. Alex is so easy to use and the Tech support is awesome. When I called they were so patient with me and when I realized, on my own, what a stupid question I asked they were so nice. After the first few months I never had to call tech support again. Everything always worked. When I had to convert, I was told that changing records wasn't a problem. Well it wasn't until I tried to do an analysis and see what I needed to purchase. During the conversion Surpass added over 50,000 items with bar codes but NO TITLE. When I try to delete all NO TITLE books the program freezes. I don't have support, another long story and am stuck trying to find time to delete the items one at a time. Barcodes are all over the place so that doesn't help either. I don't have experience with the others you mentioned, but I know from experience that Alexandria is a superior product. If you look back at previous discussions about systems in you will find a lot of positive feedback about Alexandria. My district just went to Destiny about 14 months ago. We looked at many systems. My favorite was TLC's Millennium (I think that was the name; I know it was TLC's union product). We do like Destiny; it has improved with every update. We chose Destiny over TLC, because our librarians were comfortable with our Follett software. I've been using the Alexandria system since 1994 and have never regretted the decision. The words 'user friendly" and no need to use your shelf list, were the words that got my attention back in 1994. I was the first elementary school in Canada to use this system. Now most of the schools in Chilliwack, and many parts of British Columbia, are using the Alexandria system. The system has gone through several changes during the years and is now available for both Mac and Windows. It continues to be very user friendly. I love the mac version. The middle schools have now moved to the windows version of Alexandria without any problems. When you get the Alexandria system you get a complete program. The search stations are easy for the students to use, the program does hundreds of reports and the tech support is wonderful. The tech support is available 24 hrs./ day and seven days a week. Your purchase includes all the upgrades. We were Winnebago - Sagebrush customers for years -- we moved to Destiny last year. It is a very nice product... Follett has been responsive to requests for changes. I loved Winnebago's support - then Sagebrush -- I was spoiled... Follett support is ok No different than most of the companies I deal with -- not bad -- not fantastic.... I guess nothing can compare to the folks I used to deal with when it was Winnebago... I rememerb coming to NJ and speaking at one of your state conferences about getting ready to automate.... wow time sure goes.... Follett tech support is costing more - but we have alot more add-on products... Follett won our state contract for a textbook system... This was after we switched to Destiny The entire state will be going onto the system for textbooks -- and we are using that system and like it too. Destiny is used within our district of more than 45 schools. I like it yet when I used Winnebago back in 1997 on a MAC, Winnebago was more powerful, especially with global edits. I am hoping that Follett Software takes the best from Winnebago and integrates with Destiny. It is a good program. Best features: you can specify reading programs and mark books with 856 tags; global edit of Dewey numbers/call letters/B/R/etc.; customizable reports for overdues that can scheduled, printing of barcodes and labels by date and list, great feature to match state standards with books and websites (extra cost)-and I buy and use that feature alot! We are juggling a switch to Alexandria or Destiny from Athena/InfoCentre. I've spent many hours with the demos of each one. Destiny is definitely the slicker of the two programs, if you compare them web-to-web. However, I really like the standard, non-web Alexandria product. It seems to be faster and there are many reports, etc. that I like. My Alex salesperson swears to me that with Destiny I only have the choice of a central union catalog, but my Follett person says differently. I was very straightforward with my Follett rep, and they are doing whatever they can to meet my needs. We'll see how that goes. There are lots of little things that Alex does better, in my opinion. One of them is that there's a way to print the Homeroom on the barcodes - Destiny won't let you edit your barcode report to do that. Truthfully the Alex barcodes involve replacing the school name with the teacher, but at least we can get them the way we want them. Alex reports pop up and then you close them and they go away. Destiny sends reports to a job manager where they build up and you have to go in and delete them, like a print queue or a download queue, except they don't go away when they're done. This is OK if you want to go back and run the same report again without changes, but it's kind of a pain. Destiny only gave us a week to play with their system. The Alex demo we could play with as long as we wanted to. Alex opens a new window for each task, so you don't lose what you were doing. You can edit a patron from circ without having to go back and re-enter information. I like the way Alex handles Lost and Discarded items, and I like it that they show up in the CATALOG as Lost or Discarded. I'm tired of looking for books that aren't really there. In Destiny, a lost item just doesn't show up at all, and I never figured out what to do with discarded ones. In Alex, the report setups are more compact. They use drop-down menus for selection. In Destiny you keep either cursoring down or clicking next for page after page of box-clicking setup before you can get your report printed. Diane Lungaro, librarian dianelu@yahoo.com Sussex Middle School Sussex-Wantage Regional Schools District Sussex, NJ 07461 --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Please note: All LM_NET postings are protected by copyright law. You can prevent most e-mail filters from deleting LM_NET postings by adding LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU to your e-mail address book. 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