The Jackson County Public Library and Seymour Community School Corp. have partnered by combining their digital reading resources in one app to increase students’ access to eBooks and digital audiobooks.
The new app, Sora, allows students to borrow from the school’s collection of classroom and leisure time reading selections and from the library’s juvenile and young adult digital collection.
The partnership is for SCSC students in grades 6 through 12 and provides safe access to thousands of age-appropriate titles for use inside the classroom, at home and anywhere 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Students can easily log into the library’s digital collection through Sora using their school credentials rather than requiring a separate library card.
In addition, the app supports teachers by offering education-specific tools, like achievements, exportable notes and reading progress, that encourage individualized learning.
“JCPL is excited to partner with Seymour Community Schools,” library Director Julia Aker said. “Students can easily utilize the service that we and other public libraries in Indiana have already purchased.”
Aker said through Sora, material is accessed with parameters set by the school system, which is something that cannot be done as a public library.
“We have always enjoyed a relationship between Seymour Community School libraries and Jackson County Public Library,” said Jill Prange, director of media services at Seymour High School. “We are now entering into a new partnership that offers our students the ability to enjoy even more reading materials through our shared digital book platform.”
She said the collaboration comes at a critical time in our lives with students needing access to more and more online resources.
“The biggest advantage of Sora is that students in grades K through 12 now have access to age-appropriate reading materials, even while they are at home, either due to COVID-19 or inclement weather,” Prange said. “We have literally thousands of eBooks and audiobooks available through the school accounts alone.”
She said the partnership makes even more eBooks available for students.
“Both Seymour schools and JCPL have had OverDrive for several years, but the newer Sora app is the student’s own personal account for the eLibrary,” Prange said. “We’ve only had that for a little more than a year.”
Sora allows students to manage their reading materials, view their reading stats (how many books they’ve read and total reading time), create vocabulary lists, take notes, highlight material, export those notes and highlights to their Google Drive and connect with the partner library, where they can browse and borrow more books.
“Self-selected reading is so important for everyone, offering exposure to the rest of the world, different cultures and new ideas,” Prange said. “It helps our students improve their reading and thinking skills and increases their vocabulary.”
Prange said it has always been a goal of hers to get books into the hands of all of their students. OverDrive/Sora and the partnership with JCPL are helping her get closer to that goal.
Named one of Time’s Best 100 Inventions of 2019, Sora can be downloaded through the Apple App Store and Google Play Store and on Chromebooks that support the Google Play Store. It also is available for use in web browsers at soraapp.com on any computer.
Since the library is a member of eIndiana Digital Consortium, anyone in Jackson County can borrow and read eIndiana Digital Consortium’s complete ebook, audiobook and digital magazine collection.
With a valid library card from the library and the Libby app, customers can enjoy thousands of eBooks and audiobooks, including bestsellers and new releases.
Readers of all ages can select from virtually every subject, including mystery, romance, children’s, business and more. Libby can be used on any major device or computer, including Apple, Android, Chromebook and Kindle (U.S. only).
The Libby and Sora apps were built by OverDrive and OverDrive Education, respectively. To learn more, visit overdrive.com/apps/libby or company.overdrive.com/k-12-schools/discover-sora.
For information about the Sora app, contact Janet Hensen at the Jackson County Public Library at 812-405-1833 or [email protected] or Jill Prange with Seymour Community School Corp. at 812-522-4384 or [email protected].