USLA

Hi Shawna! 

I hope you are able to gather lots of information to back you up here!  There are so many valid reasons to keep your physical library.  One brief instance I ran into just the other day was a situation where a student of mine needed to do some research for US Governement on the Constitution, but he told me he could not do the research online because he currently had a concussion from football!   I had not thought of that as a reason why I should keep resources in physical format before, but now I am revisiting my process.  As long as we have high-impact sports (or students that play club sports), this will be a reality. 

Mariah,

I am working on it!  To be honest I am still in shock at the news.  I am trying my very best to remain professional and calm, but I am still wondering how to approach this news.  I don't know if library advocacies are going to be enough.

Thank you for taking the time to respond.  Your words and ideas are greatly appreciated.

Hi Shawna,

As Mariah mentioned, there are many reports that show that efficacy of a school librarian. Just to clarify, is your admin wanting to to just replace physical books with Sora or use Sora to replace the library overall. In my opinion, two different cases. I'll address replacing the physical with digital.

To me, Sora has always been a supplement to a school library. I work with many rural school libraries that have low student counts (ie low budgets) and a consortium/district library helps to supplement the physical library.

The books in Overdrive/Sora come in a variety of  lending models determined by the publishers,  Many of the publishers have switched to the Metered Access or Cost per Click model. This is great because you can manage access when a book is popular, but stop purchasing it when it loses momentum. Think of all the copies of Harry Potter you likely have on your physical shelf. With MA/CPC, you can purchase more when the title is hot, then not renew. But this means a lot of your budget can go to renewing the MA/CPC books. Unlike your physical library where you you get to keep a copy forever the One Copy/One User books available in Sora are becoming more and more less available, again, the publishers set this, not Overdrive.

Overall, I believe it can be more expensive, and definately more work to maintain a digital library in a school/district site as a sole source. 

I work for a regional service center, we provide services to 5 school districts and 7 charter schools. By building a shared  Overdrive/Sora library to supplement the physical libraries,  we have been able to provide a  large collection of books to supplement our rural schools. Our school librarians pay 1.25 per student every year and students have access to books that they would not be able to find in their school.

There is more to this though. A library is not just about the books, and that's another discussion!

I forgotr to mention Equitable Access, by moving to an online (only) library, you may be excluding a large population of students that don't have devices/acess.

Very good point!

Chris,

I have been working on trying to get professional development for the other librarians that I work with and this got brought up because of those efforts.  It is my understanding that they want to replace the physical school libraries with Sora.  If that happens what comes next?

I am currently working with my building administrator, title 1 teacher, district literacy coach, and any other person I can think of to stop this agenda in its tracks.  I have also printed off the State Core for Library Media and trying this approach too.

Thank you for taking the time to respond :)

Keep us posted, as much as I love Sora, I would hate to see that happen, thanks for all your efforts.