Over Drive and Albemarle County Public Schools Erica

Over. Drive and Albemarle County Public Schools Erica Thorsen January 2019

Albemarle County Public Schools ● Located in Central Virginia ● Rural, suburban and urban settings ● Serves almost 14, 000 students ○ ○ ○ English language learners - 9. 7% Economically disadvantaged - 29. 5% Students with disabilities - 12. 5%

Before ● Previous State ○ ○ ○ Bookshare and Learning Ally used for students with IEPs and 504 s. Some libraries purchased Play-a-ways. Some libraries offered Kindles with pre-loaded titles. Relied on Jefferson Madison Regional Library’s Overdrive service. Relied on titles available in the public domain. Relied on methods with questionable copyright.

Pilot Program ● Based on both anecdotal evidence and scholarly research, ACPS leadership dedicated funds toward a 6 th - 12 th grade pilot program. ● As librarian at largest high school and one of the PLC leads, I was asked to administer the pilot.

Marketing ● Simple ○ ○ Emails to faculty and staff Emails to librarians ● Signage ○ Shelf markers - added QR codes that will take the user to the title on Overdrive ● Complex ○ Student made commercial

Implementation ● Nuts and Bolts ○ ○ ○ 6 th - 12 th grades Selection process Books available through ■ School library catalog ■ Customized Overdrive website ■ Sora app ● Barriers ○ Teacher pushback

Literature Circles ● As a school division ○ ○ Movement away from whole class novels to choice-based literature circles Movement towards books that contemporary texts that feature diverse characters ● Challenge ○ ○ Funds to acquire new titles Management of smaller batches of more titles ● Solution ○ ○ ○ Books can be ordered quickly Teachers or librarians request amount of e. Books/ Audiobooks needed Groups and assigned titles are managed through Title Assignments

Results ● ● Increased access to audiobooks Increased circulation Increased student requests Increased teacher requests for both individual titles and literature circle titles

Resources Benefits of Audiobooks for All Readers Is Listening to an Audiobook Cheating? To Your Brain, Listening to a Book Is Pretty Much the Same as Reading It Lamb, Annette. "Listeners' Advisory Part 3: Audiobooks across the Curriculum. " Teacher Librarian, vol. 45, no. 4, 2018, p. 52+.