Rethinking the Cost of Digital Collection Building: It May Not Be as Expensive as You Think!

Presented by Michelle Luhtala, Library Department Chair, New Canaan High School, CT; and Mary Schwander, Library Media Specialist, New Hope-Solebury High School, PA

Sponsored by Mackin Educational Resources

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Our inquiry series continues as we explore strategies to build digital collections at a reduced price. Out of necessity, School Librarian Mary Schwander and a community of Pennsylvania school librarians developed a highly effective consortium model to build digital collections at a fraction of the cost. The model is adaptable and other states are currently coordinating personnel and resources to replicate it. In this edWebinar, Michelle Luhtala interviews Mary about how this consortium is promoting equity and access throughout her state and how it can benefit school libraries elsewhere.

This recorded edWebinar will be of interest to K-12 librarians, teachers, and administrators.

This is part 3 of the 3-part series: Lenses for Inquiry: Social and Emotional Learning, Representative Collections, and Digital Collections

Part 1: Integrating Social-Emotional Learning into Your Instructional Programs
Part 2: Diversity in Context: Stretching the Idea of Building Diverse Collections

About the Presenters

Michelle Luhtala is the Library Department Chair at New Canaan High School in Connecticut and was one of five school librarians named as a “Mover and Shaker” by Library Journal in 2015. She is the winner of the 2011 “I Love My Librarian” Award and the Library Association’s 2010 Outstanding Librarian Award. The New Canaan High School Library won AASL’s National School Library Program of the year in 2010. Follow her on Twitter @mluhtala.

Mary Schwander has been the librarian at New Hope-Solebury High School for 16 years. In 2016, her school library was awarded the Outstanding School Library Program by the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association. In 2009, Mary was accepted into the Google Teacher Academy where she became a Google Certified Innovator. Mary is currently the president of the Connected Library Consortium, which provides ebooks and audio books to schools throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Follow Mary on Twitter @mschwander.

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 Mackin is one of the top providers of library and classroom materials for grades PK-12. Working with over 18,000 publishers and a database of nearly 3 million printed titles, and more than 1.9 million digital titles, Mackin supplies print books, eBooks, online educational databases, audiobooks and video resources to schools around the globe.