Destiny

Students and Teachers can now browse the NCS Library Media Center catalog using Destiny or Destiny Quest.

Our collection includes fiction and nonfiction books, general and specialty dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias, directories, almanacs, maps, atlases, time lines, famous quotations, biographies, fact finders, world books, and reference materials for art, literature, history, science, geography, technology, health, self help, colleges, and careers.

Destiny is an online interface that allows students and teachers the ability to seach the Natomas Charter School Library Media Center Catalog. Search options include Basic, Power, and Visual.

Destiny Quest is a visually engaging catalog search interface designed for the 21st century learner. With Destiny Quest students can view top 10 book lists and new arrivals, titles, availability, materials type and call number, refine search results by narrowing down the fields by author, subject, series and more, and mouse over a title for more information. Students can browse the NCS catalog without budging an inch, share and post reviews, and save their searches in a personalized space.

You can now create your own account on Destiny, to see which books you have checked out and when they are due, renew books, see your fines, place holds, recommend books to friends, write book reviews and suggest books to be purchased. See Mrs. Prettol to get your barcode number, which you will need to create your account.

To get an introduction to Destiny, see this PowerPoint presentation or go to the LMC's blog for a more interactive presentation.

Useful Search Tips for Destiny Users
Basic Search:

• Keyword searches titles, authors, subjects, series and notes.
• Title looks at all of the titles in the catalog
• Author looks at all of the author and illustrator information
• Subject looks at all of the subjects in the catalog
• Series looks at all of the series information in the catalog
• Look in helps you look for items outside of NCS
• My Searches keeps a history of your searches
• Literary and State Award Winners can be found by choosing an option for the Search Award Winners list.

Power Search:
If a Basic Search returns too many or too few results, Power Search lets you look for search terms by Keyword, Title, Author, Subject, Series or Note. These options let you specify how Destiny should treat each term. You can also define the Boolean relationship between each term.

• Look in helps you look for items outside of your site
• Material type helps you find only one particular type of material
• Publication year helps you find materials from a specific time frame
• Award Winners helps you limit your results to titled that have won either a state and/or national literary award

Defining your Search Terms:
All these words helps you find materials that contain ALL of the words in the search term. The more words you enter, the smaller the search results will be.

• Any of these words helps you find materials that include at least one of the words in the search term. The more words you enter, the larger the search results will be.
• Use Starts with when you have a search term that contains or starts with stop words, or when a title or name is very long. This search won’t ignore any of your words.
• This exact phrase helps you find materials that include a particular phrase.  Stop words are still disregarded in this type of search.

Using Boolean Operators:

• And returns titles that mention both search terms
• Or returns titles that mention either or both search terms
• Not returns titles about one search term that doesn’t mention the other

Important Terms to Know when Using Power Search:

• Stop Words: The following common words are ignored when searching

a, and, are, at, be, but, by, for, if, in, into, is, it, no, not, of, on, or, s, such,

t, that, the, their, then, there, these, they, this, to, was, will, with

If you need to use these words in your search term, select “Starting with these words.”

• Truncation: Add an asterisk (*) to the end of a word to find plurals or words with a variety of endings.

        Example:
         electron* finds:
              electron
              electrons
              electronic
              electronics

• Wildcards: Substitute ? for one or more letters to find a variety of forms or when you’re unsure of the spelling. A ? matches any single character in or at the end of a word.

       Examples:
          a?sorption finds:
             absorption
             adsorption
         Johns?n finds:
             Johnsen
             Johnson