Star Staff Reports
As educators seek more creative ways to support students’ learning, a key resource for schools is the local public library.
Now, Millington Public Library and Millington Municipal Schools have formed an innovative new partnership to increase students’ access to ebooks and digital audiobooks by combining the library’s and school’s digital reading resources in one app.
The library-school partnership provides safe access to thousands of age-appropriate titles for students’ use inside the classroom, at home and anywhere 24/7.
Through Sora, the new student reading app for Millington Municipal Schools, students can now borrow from the school’s collection of classroom and pleasure reading as well as from Millington Public Library’s children and young adult digital collection.
Students can easily log into the library’s digital collection through Sora using their school credentials rather than requiring a separate public library card.
In addition, Sora supports teachers by offering education-specific tools like achievements, exportable notes, and reading progress that encourage individualized learning.
“The Millington Public Library is very excited about our partnership with Millington Municipal Schools to make our ebook and audiobook collections available to all students,” said Stephanie Kinsler, Library Director of Millington Public Library. “Getting these resources on every Millington child’s laptop is a great accomplishment! Thank you to Ms. Shirey Szalay, Librarian at the Millington Central High School, for initiating this process for the students and to everyone at MMS who helped make this happen.”
A librarian from Millington Municipal Schools added, “We are both proud and excited to have an on-line platform called Sora for students to check out ebooks and read this year.
Through the generous support of the Millington Public Library, students now have access to the public library’s Tennessee READS collection which includes over 100,000 titles including ebooks, audiobooks, and magazines.
All of this is easily accessed through the students’ Clever portal as well as the mobile app available for phones and tablets.”
The Sora app was named one of TIME’s Best Inventions 2019 and is available for Millington Municipal Schools students to download through the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, and on Chromebooks that support the Google Play Store.
It is also available for use in web browsers at https://soraapp.com on any computer.
Since Millington Public Library is a member of Tennessee READS, the entire Millington community can also borrow and read Tennessee READS’ complete ebook, audiobook and digital magazine collection. With a valid library card from Millington Public Library and the award-winning Libby app, patrons can enjoy thousands of ebooks and audiobooks including bestsellers and new releases.
Readers of all ages can select from virtually every subject ranging from mystery, romance, children’s, business and more.
Libby can be used on any major device or computer, including Apple (R), Android™, Chromebook™ and Kindle(R) (U.S. only).
The Libby and Sora apps were built by OverDrive and OverDrive Education respectively.
To learn more, visit www.overdrive.com/apps/libby/ and https://company.overdrive.com/k-12-schools/discover-sora/
OverDrive strives to create “a world enlightened by reading.” Serving a growing network of 64,000 libraries and schools in 84 countries, OverDrive – and its K-12 division, OverDrive Education – delivers the industry’s largest digital catalog of ebooks, audiobooks, magazines and other content through award-winning apps.
The Libby reading app for libraries is one of Popular Mechanics’ 20 Best Apps of the Decade, while the student reading app Sora is one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2019. Founded in 1986,
OverDrive is based in Cleveland, Ohio USA and was named a Certified B Corp in 2017. www.overdrive.com
