Hampden Bank and LEEF grants expand unique library system

Date: 4/19/2010

April 19, 2010

By Courtney Llewellyn

Reminder Assistant Editor



LONGMEADOW -- Library learning in Longmeadow has just taken a great leap forward.

Thanks to a grant from Hampden Bank and the Longmeadow Educational Excellence Foundation (LEEF), the Destiny Library system is now accessible to students in all five public schools in town.

Last year, only the high school library had the Destiny Library software. Destiny Library offers integrated circulation, cataloging, searching, reporting and library management to help each library in the district work more efficiently, according to the manufacturer's Web site. District-wide management tools include searching, interlibrary loan, holds, reporting and system administration.

The system also offers users vetted information and resources, maximizes a library's power to support students and teachers, curriculum and instruction, and enriched content subscriptions that strengthen the library/classroom connection by matching titles to students' reading levels. It also aligns collection materials to standards, provides safe Web searching and streamlines cataloging of non-print materials.

"On the old system each computer was on its own," high school librarian Lori Robbins explained. "Destiny allows you to look up books online at school and at home. It's exciting to find a book and information on a Web site you couldn't find before."

Maura Joyce, librarian at Blueberry Hill School, where the system was demonstrated on April 9, added that the accelerated reader program through Destiny allows students to find books that are best suited to their reading levels.

Joyce listed other benefits of the system: telling students when a checked out book is due back; ranking the top 10 books in each library; allowing students to create lists of books they'd like to read; and making the addition of books to the catalog much easier, saving money by eliminating the need to pay vendors to do it.

"The kids recommend books to us now," Joyce said. "It's really great."

Hampden Bank gave LEEF a $10,000 grant for the system thanks to the grant writing efforts of Sherri Knight, a LEEF board member. The grant supports Destiny Library in two schools.

"This is the modality of learning now," Knight said as she looked over a computer lab full of fifth graders demonstrating the system. "It's on computers. This [program] taps into their learning style."

"Our foundation is very focused on childhood education," Tom Burton, president of Hampden Bank, told Reminder Publications. "When LEEF approached us with this program it made a lot of sense to us to give kids better access to books and make libraries more efficient. I can see from the demonstration that [Destiny Library] makes it easier to select books and encourages reading, which is the basic foundation of education and life."

Superintendent of Schools E. Jahn Hart agreed. "The kids are comfortable with it, and that makes it so valuable to them," she said. "It's real world learning and it lets students expand their interests."