LIS 5250 : Do I jump on ‘non-print bandwagon’?

As part of my studies for Week 5 of LIS 5250, I was posed the question of whether I would include digital resources at my library.

I have faced situations where physical-library closures have shuttered access to physical collections (Parkhill, 2020) and, for this reason, I feel it vitally necessary to be on the “non-print bandwagon” (Erickson, n.d.). I accessed a recent article related to e-book usage in libraries via “Library Literature & Information Science Full Text,” a database available to me through UCM’s James C. Kirkpatrick Library (JCKL).

A group of library educators in the Central Unified School District in Fresno County, California were faced with a newspaper headline, circa May 2018, that “Fresno County is a book desert in the summer, and the effect on kids is ‘devastating’” (Wile, 2021, p. 33). The author relates that in the school district where she oversees library services, “we did not have a branch of the local public library within reach, and many of our families lacked the transportation options to get to a library branch” (Wile, 2021, p. 34).

Wile talks about the benefits of “Public Library Connect,” which is a feature in Sora (OverDrive’s reading app for schools) that allows students to browse their public library’s OverDrive collection while still in the Sora app. “With the flip of a switch, our students went from having access to just our 2,000 or so titles to having access to the public library’s OverDrive titles, which dwarfed our collection and expanded student access to nearly 17,000 titles” (ibid).

Our course textbook highlights special considerations in the ALA Toolkit for electronic resources, including “Equipment needed to provide access to the information” (Kerby, 2019, p. 26). An existing program for Central Unified students to check out Chromebooks and mobile hotspots helped to prevent what might have been a “major access issue” (Wile, 2021, p. 35-36).

Wile states that, “As a longtime teacher librarian, I have consistently and persistently advocated for the balance of both print and digital resources in our school libraries and in our classrooms” (Wile, 2021, p. 36). I echo Wile’s sentiments that “No one system is perfect, but having digital options expands access for our students” (ibid).

References:
Erickson, P. (n.d.) LIS 5250: Selection tools project [Course handout]. University of Central Missouri, LIS 5250.

Kerby, M. (2019). An introduction to collection development for school librarians (2nd ed.) American Association of School Librarians.

Parkhill, C.M. (2020, May 14). School library reopening during COVID-19: My thoughts. Cynthia Parkhill. https://cynthiaparkhill.blogspot.com/2020/05/school-library-reopening-during-covid.html

Wile, J. (2021). School and public library partnerships: How to quickly increase student access to ebooks. Computers in libraries 41(1), 33-36.