Library Cards for All* *if you’re a student and your parents say it is okay Ann Morgester (ASD) Elizabeth Nicolai (APL)

Who are we? Anchorage Public Library Elizabeth Nicolai - NicolaiEL@ci.anchorage.ak.us 907-343-2840 Youth Services Coordinator Anchorage School District Ann Morgester Morgester_Ann@asdk12.org 907-742-4461 Library Supervisor

CONNECTED LIBRARY CHALLENGE Came from the White House Initiative ConnectED Both agreed Aim to increase access to public library resources by public school students Over next year a number of options were discussed Huge committee made it difficult to make progress

1st Try - Muldoon area pilot Initial Pilot: Muldoon area Schools - encouraging library card sign ups Used an extremely intense level of traditional library outreach methods (sign ups at back to school nights, class room talks, fliers home with students, etc) Investing a large amount of staff and time very few new library card sign ups were recorded Failure led to decision to integrate public library cards into the online registration process

33,843 records 2016-2017 School Year 75% of ASD Students Online registration allowed us to reach all returning students Issues: No new to district students including kindergarteners were able to opt in School librarians couldn’t see which students were opted in until later in the year We sent out cardboard cards but neither school nor APL staff had time to affix all the barcodes Parents could not change status and there were no updates allowed.

Staff Training for ASD Staff 32 trainings 1,891 people 98 new cards APL hosted ASD Librarians during beginning of year inservice Librarians encouraged to invite public librarians in to talk to staff Regarding the project, databases, and other resources

Outreach directly to students Focused first year on staff Continued traditional outreach School tours School family nights Classroom visits For the first year we focused on reaching out and training staff. Did attend several back to school nights, literacy nights, etc. Talked to groups of kids at middle schools, etc Hosted several tour groups of schools

Outcomes for 2016-2017 Increases were seen in Newsbank (64%), Tumblebooks (163%), and Worldbook (97%) Hoopla (130%)- may not have been entirely due to APL/ASD Project Checkout of physical items was low but we expected that Outcomes – increase in electronic database usage and check outs: · Directly attributable to our outreach: (the databases we plugged the most) o Nearly doubled Newsbank (64% increase) o Nearly tripled Tumblebook (163% increase) o Doubled World Book usage (97% increase) · Huge increases, might have been our outreach or the general public o Hoopla, more than doubled, 130% increase · Check outs were not great with these cards, but we always expected that eresources were a primary focus not physical resources. We took snapshots throughout the year to see how the usage was. Usage did increase throughout the year showing that outreach was working. o On October 14, only 38 ASD students has used their new cards. o On January 13, 105 users had checked out 227 items o On April 25, 181 users had checked out 193 items

Staff Survey Outcomes Staff with library cards from 69% to 74% Downloadable ebooks & audiobooks Staff use from 18% to 20% Staff encourage students to use 18% to 27% Staff using in a classroom lesson 7% to 9% Mango Languages Staff encourage students to use doubled Staff using in a classroom quadrupled Staff comments: I have encouraged students and staff to use a number of these, as well as using a number of them to support my lessons. I am going to use these next year as I create lesson plans.

86 % 2017-2018 All students able to opt in Monthly updates so changes can be made 40,819 students opted in 86 % Includes pre-K through 12th grade

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