I attended this six-week virtual institute in order to gain a better understanding of the inner-workings of our Library Management System (LMS) and learn how to enhance the Library's management and promotion of the collection. Unfortunately, I didn't get as much out of the institute as I'd hoped. Much of the institute was focused on district-wide library systems and management of multiple locations, with additional time spent on teaching how to integrate Follett's proprietary platforms (such as their ebook platform, which I have tried and did not find as user-friendly or seamless as Overdrive, our current platform).

Follett's tools for collection promotion were interesting. Between user lists and open source add-ons, there is quite a bit we can do through Follett to promote the collection. However, the promotional tools require students to spend time interacting with the Follett website, reading reviews by unidentified users, and asks students to creating individual accounts for the site, none of which feels like a great use of K-8 student time when they could be using our existing promotional tools (displays, recommended reading lists, and Librarians). In short, many of these tools are probably more appropriate for high schoolers.

Finally, and perhaps most disappointingly, I learned (despite my many attempts to uncover this information over past several years) that there is no way to search the collection by the more granular criteria I would like to use. Weeding and refreshing will continue to be a slow process. I can only hope Follett adds this functionality at some point in the near future.