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Follett: An ILS Vendor Review

Follett and its growing portfolio of integrated library systems (ILS) tools is headquartered

at ​1391 Corporate Drive, McHenry, Illinois 60050. The name of its street address seems fitting

for this ever-expanding data-dominating machine. In 2015, Follett appointed Ray A. Griffith as

President and CEO (Breeding) . It has been since 2015 that Follett has gone on a shopping spree,

acquiring six different ILS systems in that time. Before getting into the present-day service

dominance of Follett, let us first reverse course and investigate its origins.

Company History & Products

In the company’s earliest forms, its history can be said to begin in 1873 as a used

bookstore in Wheaton, Illinois owned by Charles M. Barnes. However, this far back, the current

company is essentially unrecognizable. Follett began to take its current form in 1984 when it

acquired Library Software Company and used that new technology to found Follett Software

Company in 1985 (Breeding). Since that time, Follett has been releasing new versions of library

systems management software and acquiring other companies who do similar work. My favorite

example of this is in 2013 when Follett sold a large collection of BWI (Book Wholesalers,

Incorporated) assets to Baker & Taylor (a large childrens book distribution company). This is

what Marshall Breeding has to say about the transaction:

Follett Corporation and Baker & Taylor announced the sale of certain assets of
Book Wholesalers, Inc., to Baker & Taylor. BWI is a Follett Corporation
company that specializes in providing children's and young adult books and
audiovisual materials to public libraries. This transaction is the result of a
strategic decision by the Follett School & Library Group to concentrate on the
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PreK-12 market. For Follett, Baker & Taylor's already powerful public library
offerings made it the best choice to acquire these BWI assets.

At first, this transaction seems like a step backward for the library media giant, Follett. In

2016, though, you see that Follett was playing the long game- even potentially using the capital

raised by the sale of BWI to expand three years later. Again, Marshall explains,

Follett Corporation acquired Baker & Taylor, the leading distributor of books,
video and music products to public libraries and institutions, and a major
wholesaler to retailers worldwide. With combined sales of $3.6 billion, the two
businesses will offer librarians, patrons, educators and students unprecedented
access to the best curated physical and digital content wherever learning and
reading take place in the community.

Follett purchased the entire company they sold a mere portion of their own company to three

years prior. Now, Follett is poised to expand even further with their newfound united front in the

library media distribution space.

In addition to their software development products, Follett offers many ILS tools as well.

The reason why I chose Follett as my focus for this review is because my school’s public library

uses one of these additional tools heavily. Destiny is an ILS that my school uses quite a bit, but

apparently, so do a growing number of others. “Now in use by more than 4,000 districts and

nearly 17,000 schools, usage of Collections by Destiny has increased 62 percent from year one to

the 2018-19 school year” (Breeding). Since 2003, Destiny has been adopted by 2.5 million

users. In addition to Destiny, some noteworthy products from Follett are Circulation Plus,

Winnebago Spectrum, Athena, and InfoCentre. Between these services, nearly 21,000 libraries

use an ILS from Follett. For comparison’s sake, Library World (another ILS provider) currently
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serves 169 libraries, Axiell serves about 2,800, Equinox serves 677, ByWater 1,300, and

ExLibris 4,200. Clearly, Follett is positioned dominantly in the marketspace since it serves more

libraries than more than half of its competitors listed on LibraryTechnology.org combined.

Destiny

The specific ILS product to be investigated here is going to be Destiny, as mentioned

above, since it is the primary tool used by the public school where I work. The first noteworthy

take-away about Destiny is that it is not “one product” but a suite of several. The reason why

Destiny has achieved such large numbers of schools adopting it is because of the variety of

functions it has. From Follett’s website, ​“Destiny [the newest version] provides enhancements to

help students and teachers more easily find the best resources to meet learning goals and

objectives, and includes updates to the entire Destiny family of products – Destiny Library

Manager, Destiny Discover, Collections by Destiny, Destiny Resource Manager and Destiny

Analytics” (Follettlearning.com). The collections feature is Destiny’s fastest growing service.

This service allows librarians to electronically share the resources that the school owns access to

throughout the district instantaneously. Another noteworthy product in this Destiny line is the

Destiny Discover tool. This serves as a search engine for library collections. Students and staff

alike can access the database of available material and view it immediately (if electronic) or

request the item wherever it is located. The Destiny Discover tool has been updated many times

and is now often used in a similar capacity as a Google search with results based on relevance

like the popular search engine. This is what Follett says about its most recent version of

Discover: “Upgrades to Destiny Discover, which provides one convenient discovery interface for

students and teachers to search and access resources, include providing recommendations for
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students on their next book, as well as search improvements to help students identify resources at

their individualized reading level” (Follettlearning.com).

A portion of Destiny that I did not know much about before this project is a portion of

Destiny that has been released in 2017. Destiny Analytics is a tool that allows its users to track

and learn in real-time how its resources are being used. It allows the libraries that subscribe to

observe how its patrons are actually utilizing their resources that are available. The obvious

applications of this technology are staggering. Libraries spend huge sums of money gaining

access to a wide variety of material so that their patrons can get the information and resources

they need when they need them. But how many of these resources are actually being used and

how often? These are the questions that were difficult to answer in the electronic realm until

Destiny Analytics was released. Libraries now have the option to drop resources from their

portfolio if nobody is using them, which can save a lot of money immediately, and even more

over time. The library community can become much more efficient and streamlined with its

catalog of resources and afford to expand its holdings in areas that are gaining popularity and

use. Destiny Analytics is the newest development of working smarter, not harder, in the ILS field

(Follettlearning.com).

Follett is a company with wide adoption already and is poised to gain an even larger

market share in the years to come by continuing its push into developing software for libraries

and data tracking capabilities. Follett has strong long-term planning and is not afraid of investing

heavily in what it sees as the future. At its rate of expansion and the scope of the company’s

ambition, I am intrigued to see what they accomplish in the not-so-distant future.

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Bibliography

Breeding, M. (n.d.) ​Follett.​ https://librarytechnology.org/vendors/follett/

N.A. (February 13, 2018)

https://www.follettlearning.com/about-us/news/press-releases/destiny-155

N.A. (July 20, 2017)

https://www.follettlearning.com/about-us/news/press-releases/folletts-new-destiny-analyt

ics