The Garland County Library said Friday it has partnered with the Jessieville, Lake Hamilton and Lakeside school districts to increase students' access to e-books and digital audiobooks using a single app.
The Public Library CONNECT partnership is facilitated by OverDrive, a digital reading platform that serves both the library and the school districts. It will combine the digital reading resources of the library and the school districts on one app, Sora, the library said in a news release.
"The partnership provides safe access to thousands of age-appropriate titles for students' use inside the classroom, at home, and anywhere, 24/7. Through Sora, the new student reading app for these schools, students can now borrow from both the school's collection of classroom and pleasure reading titles as well as from Garland County Library's juvenile and/or young adult digital collection," the release said.
Students can log into the library's digital collection through Sora using their school credentials/student ID, rather than requiring a separate library card. In addition, Sora supports teachers by offering education-specific tools like achievements, exportable notes, and reading progress that encourage individualized learning, it said.
"We are excited that a few local schools have joined us on Sora," Katie Allen, children's librarian, said in the release. "This partnership makes it one step easier for kids and teens to find free reading materials during the school year and the summer break."
With Sora, students at the participating schools just have to log in with their school ID numbers and do not have to keep up with a separate library card number. In addition to Sora, the Garland County Library offers eCards, which provide access to all the library's digital content, to any Garland County resident at gclibrary.com.
The Sora app is available for Jessieville, Lake Hamilton, and Lakeside students to download through the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, and on Chromebooks that support the Google Play Store. It is also available for use in web browsers at https://soraapp.com on any computer.
Other schools that would like additional information can contact library Director Adam Webb at [email protected] for more information.
The Libby and Sora apps were built by OverDrive and OverDrive Education, respectively. To learn more, visit www.overdrive.com/apps/libby/.