Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

Last night the Duchy Bored approved Destiny. Our fate awaits us. Let's take a look at what was said.
A committee made up of librarians, a bookstore manager and TUSD’s central cataloger met to discuss upgrading the district’s library automation system. What librarians? The librarians that I know were all voted off the island.
At the same time, many of our high schools especially, have been concerned about the tracking of textbooks and the ability to know exactly where we have extra books that could be used for increased enrollment at another school. This is completely true, so true that several high schools have already purchased, out of the school budget, a program called Blue Bear* to manage their textbooks. Maybe there should have been more than one bookstore manager on the committee. Or maybe it was a Borders bookstore manager instead of a Duchy bookstore manager.
Centralized textbook management and cataloging will eliminate the need for site level entry. Who will be doing this centralized management and cataloging? The Black Queen has repeatedly told Dotland that all money had to be spent in the schools, not centrally. She already eliminated one third of Dotland.
Libraries will extend into homes. We could have been doing this for years but TS wouldn't allow it. What policy has changed here?
The student interface within the electronic card catalog will make it easier for students to search for, locate and reserve books. Liar, liar, etc. The interface is very similar to what we already have.
Centralized cataloging and information processing will save hundreds of hours of work for librarians on-site. The time that is saved will be spent working with students. Let's see now, her Blackness has attempted to move ALL of the ordering, processing, and cataloging out of Dotland and dump it on the librarians and school offices. She has not been completely successful but not for lack of trying. Again, who is going to be doing this centralized cataloging and information processing, the spectral ghosts of Dotland?
Schools will be able to view the textbook inventories of each school, making it easier to borrow or swap textbooks. What's going to usher in this new era of interschool cooperation?
Destiny’s centralized system will let the District share expensive instructional materials across the district, helping stretch the media and textbook budgets. Yeah, right. School A will definitely be willing to loan school B their expensive resource purchased with their own limited school budget. Also obviously they could be doing this with the current software...if the will were there. The technology has been there for years.

It appears that once again the Duchy is buying technocrap as a substitute for fixing the district peopleware. ALL and I do mean ALL of the things Destiny can do could have been done with our current software and some changes of personnel and policy. Oh, wait. Destiny will allow us to do our Duchy work at home, after hours, of course. We never do that now, do we? And we really, really want to do that, don't we? Liar, Liar!!

Let's hear it for the remaining dwarfs of Dotland, Clueless, Mystified, Puzzled and Baffled!




*Normally I don't use real names here to allow reasonable protection or at least plausible deniability in a duchy that has had a century of political infighting to hone the bloodless blood feud to a high art. However, I have so much trouble believing that anyone would buy (or sell) accounting software called Blue Bear. That must be made up!