Digital Students to Literate Minds: Bringing E-Books to YOUR School Library

The School Library System of Champlain Valley Educational Services is pleased to announce that they have been named a recipient of the 2011-2012 Northern New York Library Network Technology Service Improvement Grant. This $10,000 grant will launch the project Digital Students to Literate Minds, an initiative to bring affordable e-books to students in the Champlain Valley. 

The mission of The Digital Students to Literate Minds grant project is to improve school library service by facilitating equitable access to e-materials. These materials will be provided by the vendor OverDrive and include both fiction and non-fiction e-books and audio books. Providing e-materials to students that can be downloaded to any personal device, at any time, and from any location, greatly increases student access to reading and reference materials and in turn has the potential to improve student achievement. 

Modeled after similar initiatives in the Saratoga region, the CVES School Library System will be leading school districts toward the goal of providing equitable and cost-effective access to e-materials for all students. By facilitating a collaborative approach to e-books the School Library System will work with districts to divide the cost of expensive licensing equally among the 41 school libraries in our system, making e-books attainable for even our smallest public and parochial schools in the region. 

Presently, e-books that are downloadable to any personal device including cell phone, iPad, Kindle, and Nook are not available at public and college libraries in our region.

The mission of the CVES School Library System is to provide equitable access to information to all members and to support member libraries in their efforts to help students meet the Common Core Standards. To meet this mission CVES SLS follows a five year plan of service filed with the New York State Division of Library Development, portions of which align with the anticipated outcomes of the Digital Students to Literate Minds grant project.