Using Destiny

Need to find a book in the McCarter library? Destiny is the place to be! Destiny is the name of our online library catalog. It can tell you if a book is in the library or checked out, where to find the book in the library, where to find books on a certain subject or by a certain author, and lots of other things too!

Logging In:

Unfortunately, you can only use Destiny on a school library. But when you're at school, you can use it on your classroom computers, in the computer lab, or in the library. Library class is pretty short, and you only have a couple of minutes to be on the computers. It's a great idea to look books up in your classroom before you come to library if possible. When you first log in to a computer, you will need to find the Destiny icon. It will look like the icon the arrow is pointing to below:

Once you click on that icon, you will see this screen:

It's important that you check two things before you begin searching. Look at the arrows on the screenshot below. See how both of them are pointing to the words "McCarter Elementary School"? That's what you want to see. If the words in either of those places say something different, you need to change them to "McCarter Elementary School" by clicking on the Location drop down menu (where the blue arrow is pointing).

Searching by Title:

Now you're ready to search! Search for books using the five buttons under the search bar. They say Title, Author, Subject, Keyword, and Series.

Note: Destiny is VERY picky about spelling. If you spell something wrong, it will not find your book even if we have it in the library. If you aren't sure how to spell something, be sure to ask Ms. Schramm, Mrs. Frances, or your teacher to help you out.

Let's say you want to find the book Bridge to Terabithia. You type the title in to the search bar. Which button do you think you would click? That's right: the Title button! The Title button is the button the pink arrow is pointing to below.

When you've typed your title into the search bar and clicked the title button, this screen will appear:

It looks like the McCarter library owns two different versions of Bridge to Terabithia: one that was published in 1977 and one that was published in 1987. They are the same book, but they probably have different pictures on their covers. That can happen when a book is so popular that the company that published or made it decides to publish it again years later, but with a different cover that looks more modern or up-to-date.

How do we know if the book is checked out or not? Look where the blue arrows are pointing. Destiny says there is "1 of 1 available" for each book. The number on the left is the number we have currently in the library that are available for you to check out. The number on the right is the total number of copies of that book that the McCarter library owns. It looks like the McCarter library owns one copy of each of these versions of Bridge to Terabithia (the number on the right). Neither book is checked out, so there is also 1 of each available (the number on the left).

In the example above, I searched for the book The Summer of Hammers and Angels. I can't check the book out, though. How do I know? That's right, because there are "0 of 1available." That means the McCarter library owns one copy of this book (the number on the right), but it is checked out (the number on the left). What if it said "3 of 5 available"? Would you be able to check out the book? Yes! That's because the McCarter library owns five copies of the book, but only two of the five are checked out. So there are still three books available in the library for you to check out.

Searching by Author:

Now, what if you really like the book you just read by Mary Downing Hahn, and you want to know what other books she has written that we have at McCarter? In that case, you would type her name into the search bar and then click the "Author" button (see the blue arrow below).

You will then see this screen:

See how it says "Titles: 1-18 of 18" right above the first book? That means that we have 18 different Mary Downing Hahn books in the McCarter Library and Destiny is showing you all 18; you just have to keep scrolling down to see them all. You can see on the right how many copies of each book we own and how many are available to be checked out right now. Say you decide you want to check out Following My Own Footsteps. How do you know where to find it in the library? Destiny tells you that too! Look at where the arrow is pointing below:

Do you see how it says "Call #: F HAH"? Every book in every library in the world has what's called a call number. The call number is like the book's address in the library. Just like your house has an address, every book has an address too. That is how we find books in the library. Books with a call number that starts with the letter "E" are in the Everyone section of the McCarter library (see the call number of the book Janey and the Famous Author above the book we're looking at right now!). Books that have a letter "F" are in the Fiction section. Books that have a number instead of a letter are in the nonfiction section. The letters after the first letter or number are the first three letters of the author's last name.

What section of the library is our book Following My Own Footsteps in? The first letter in the call number is an "F" so.... it's in the Fiction section! All of the books in the Fiction and Everyone sections are in alphabetical order by the first three letters of the author's last name. Mary Downing Hahn's last name is "Hahn" so the first three letters are "HAH." You will need to find the H's and then look for "HAH."

Searching by Subject/Keyword:

The subject and keyword searches are different. Say you are doing a project on Indians and you want to find all of the books we have on Indians in the McCarter Library. Your best choice would be to do a subject search. Type in the word "Indians" in the search bar and then click "Subject" (see the arrow below):

Now let's look at another example:

That will get you a list of all of the books in the library that are about Indians. What would happen if you clicked on "Keyword" instead of "Subject"? You would get a list of every book in the library that has the word "Indian" somewhere in the book. That book may not be about Indians. It might just have the word "Indian" in it for one reason or another. Here's the screen you would get if you clicked on "Subject" above:

You can see right above the first book that there are 186 books in the library about Indians, and this first page is showing you books 1-25. To see the rest you will need to click either "Show All " or click on the next page (see right above the '1 of 1 available' for the first book). The call numbers of the books above all start with a number (392, 394), so we know they are in the nonfiction section. The letters after the number are still the first three (or more) letters of the author's last name. To find the first book, you would need to go to the nonfiction section, find the 300s, find the 392s, and then look in alphabetical order for "SHE."

Destiny Quest:

Destiny Quest is another way to search Destiny. To get to Destiny Quest from the regular search screen, click on "Destiny Quest" on the left side. See the blue arrow below.

Below is the Destiny Quest Home Page. The home page is pretty cool because it tells you the most popular books in the McCarter library (The Top 10 Books) as well as new books that we will have in the library soon (New Arrivals).

In Destiny Quest, you don't have to use the Title, Author, Subject buttons. You can simply type any of those things into the search bar and Destiny Quest will find what you're looking for. The results look a little different though, so take a look and see how things have changed. I typed "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" into the search bar. Below is the page Destiny Quest gave me:

As you can see, there is a big difference between regular Destiny and Destiny Quest. Here are all of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books that the McCarter library owns. Instead of looking for the number available, however, now you just have to see if the icon in the upper right of the book cover says "In" or "Out" (look at the arrow above). If it says "In" at least one copy of that book is available to be checked out from the library. If it says "Out" all of the copies of that book are checked out.

Here are the Mary Downing Hahn books again (I typed "Mary Downing Hahn" into the search bar and clicked "Go"):

You can see right above the first book that there are 18 Mary Downing Hahn books in the library, but this screen is only showing you the first ten of them. To see the rest, click "Next" where the pink arrow is pointing. Can you find the book that is lost?

The last thing you need to know is where to find the call number in Destiny Quest so you can find your book if it's in. Look at the pink arrow below!

The call number in Destiny Quest is in bold type under the title and author. The call number for these books is "F KINNEY" so what section would they be in? That's right: Fiction! Because this is a popular series, it is in a special place on top of the book cases, but if it were a regular book you would need to look for the "K" section in Fiction and then look for "KIN".

To get back to the regular Destiny search from Destiny Quest, simply click "Exit Destiny Quest" at the top of your screen.

Now you are an expert on how to look up books using Destiny or Destiny Quest! If you ever have any questions, be sure to ask Ms. Schramm or Mrs. Francis and we'll be happy to help you out!