Destiny Discover 4+

It’s mind-boggling that the company who made the wonderful Destiny Quest app still has not succeeded in developing a halfway decent library catalog app to replace it. With school libraries as a major client for Follett Destiny and the print collection being a really key part of school libraries, they need a basic app for searching the print collection on iOS. Right now, this app requires logging in and going to a different app tab just to get to the basic search screen, and even then it only searches e-books by default. I understand that they’re a commercial company and really trying to encourage districts to purchase Follett e-books, but they’re failing to provide needed services to many school libraries. It’s too much work for students to log in just to do a quick search, especially younger ones.

It is better than the original Destiny Discover app that didn’t remember our school and regularly had the little spinning circle for far too long.

First off I love that patrons can search, checkout, and read all in one app. However, I wish they would’ve included the features the Destiny Discover shortcut has like new releases, popular titles, ebooks, and audiobooks all displayed with book covers. This would certainly help younger readers and readers who are undecided about what they want to check out. As it is, a patron would have to know what they are looking for and type it into the search bar. Also, the app is defaulted to search ebooks, and if the user isn’t aware of this, they will often come back with no results. Patrons that use this new app have to login since there is no option to search as a guest user, which again makes it difficult for younger users. As another reviewer pointed out, there is no option to place titles on hold. It would be helpful for Follett to update existing apps, rather than continue to release new apps, as it is confusing to most users to try and keep up with which app they need to use.

Not sure where to begin with this app. I am glad there are search and digital checkout features. However, no holds for digital or print is disappointing, no browsing features, like the ribbons on the online version, make the app cold and unappealing, and finally, to still need the Read app to listen to audiobooks is extremely frustrating. This app should not have been pushed out to schools until it could provide what students want and need.