NEWS RELEASES > MAY 17, 2017
BALTIMORE, MD — Follett today announced it has entered into a partnership with Unbound Concepts and its flagship platform, Artifact, which helps districts, teachers, librarians, and curriculum buyers discover the best content for their students. Artifact catalogs the topics, themes, concepts, educational objectives, and literary elements in content — all of which can now be found as enhanced metadata tags within Titlewave®, Follett’s powerful collection development and curriculum support tool.
According to Katie Palencsar, CEO/Founder of Unbound Concepts, the Artifact platform’s metadata tags are pulled from a fixed set of more than 700 terms that describe content, encompassing topics, themes, and literary and educational elements.
“Each tag includes descriptive information and a text snippet showing how the concept appears in the text,” Palencsar said. “Artifact supports a common language between teachers and librarians, which empowers stakeholders to work together to recommend the right books for a curriculum, classroom, or student. Plus, it allows publishers to highlight, through search and discovery, critical elements in their text to better sell into schools and libraries.”
Nader Qaimari, President for Follett School Solutions, said the partnership is a first step toward developing universal meta-tagging for K-12 instructional content incorporation, and added the use of Artifact in Titlewave® will provide educators the opportunity to curate titles and lists based on specific topics, themes, and curriculum elements.
“Artifact provides assurance that targeted curriculum elements exist in the texts purchased and assigned to classrooms,” Qaimari said.“Artifact also provides a way to develop collections around a district’s scope and sequence. This partnership will allow us to provide evidence-based curation, meaning when a teacher or librarian assigns a particular text—print or digital— it supports exactly what a student needs and aligns to their instructional objective.”
Each Artifact includes three key items: 1) an artifact type, which is selected from Unbound Concepts’ taxonomy; 2) a rationale, which is written by a teacher and shows how and why the artifact is in the text; and 3) a quotation from the text to provide direct evidence.
Unbound Concepts partners with a variety of book distributors and publishers, including Baker & Taylor, which Follett acquired more than a year ago.
Offering books featuring favorite licensed characters can engage young readers
April 10, 2025
Holden, my 21-month-old, has fallen in love. His early morning snack and “couch time” includes a dose of “Tiger!” This is toddler for, “Mom, turn on Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood.” It inevitably leaves me singing whatever jingle is repeated throughout the...
Read more
LOCAL BUSINESS DONATES SALES TO KIDS IN NEED
April 10, 2025
McHenry, Ill., Apr. 10, 2025 – Edythe's Book Nook, the employee bookstore of McHenry’s Follett Content, is proud to announce the donation of $1,300 from its January and February 2025, sales to Kids in Need McHenry County. This generous contribution will support the organization's...
Read more
March 12, 2025
McHenry, Ill., Mar. 12, 2025 – Follett Content, the largest provider of educational materials to 86,000 PreK-12 schools globally, today announced a strategic alignment to better serve its customer base with an enhanced sales organization and by establishing distinct pillars.Each pillar –...
Read more
Follett Educational Foundation Partners with MCC to Offer 10 Annual Full-Tuition Scholarships
January 28, 2025
CRYSTAL LAKE, Ill., Jan. 28, 2025 – The Follett Educational Foundation has partnered with the Friends of McHenry County College (MCC) Foundation to establish ten annual full-tuition scholarships for students graduating from McHenry County high schools and attending MCC. The Follett...
Read more
Follett Educational Foundation funds book drive for Native American students
January 16, 2025
MCHENRY, Ill., Jan. 16, 2025 — More than 160 K-8 students, who reside on a Navajo Indian Reservation in rural Arizona, will have their home libraries enhanced courtesy of a book donation from the Follett Educational Foundation.Every student from Jeddito Public School,...
Read more
How McHenry-based Follett Content grew from a family business to an international company
January 14, 2025
Follett Content CEO Britten Follett always said she never wanted to be a part of the multi-generational family business because she wanted to do her own thing. For 10 years she was an Emmy Award-winning TV reporter before joining Follett...
Read more