Things are coming in quickly! Everyone wants to help out, which is awesome. We were so bummed to have to cancel Homeschool Information Night, little did we know everyone would be doing school at home.
We are ironing out our virtual storytime ideas still so stay tuned — there are a lot of details in the copyright laws of reproducing copyrighted books and music unfortunately.
Free Resources – No Library Card
Reading
Mackin is giving access to Classical Literature for Elementary through High School levels. Here is the link for those free classic eBooks. This will be available until the end of the 2019-20 academic school year.
Foreign Language Learning
The Global Digital Library is another way to get access to free eBooks. In the top right, they allow you to chose the language of the eBook as well. Another good resource for multilingual learners is Storyweaver. Finally, there is the International Children’s Digital Library, which includes folktales & stories told in their native languages in eBook form. Akelius pairs with Google Classroom to focus on students without a native literacy in their native language who need to learn a foreign language. The languages available are English, Greek, Swedish, and French.
General Digital Media Resources
The Association for Library Services to Children has a curated list of children’s digital media resources. This list may be found here. This list includes real-time, dynamic, and interactive media content for children 14 years of age and younger that enables and encourages active engagement and social interaction while informing, educating, and entertaining in exemplary ways.
Resources You Need Your Library Card To Use
The Great Courses through Kanopy
Kanopy is best known for their video streaming service but they also offer access to The Great Courses. Simply login to your Kanopy account and enter “The Great Courses” into the search bar at the top of the screen. They have 6,202 videos to choose from regarding all types of subjects! Kanopy does have a monthly limit, which may be found in the top right of the screen next to your username.
NoveList K-8 Plus
NoveList is a great way to find your next book. This is actually a resource many of our librarians use to help recommend books to you! Every book listing on this database has read-alike suggestions paired with it. You may also search for books based on reading level.
To access this service, you will need to enter in your library card number. A direct link will not work because of this authentication reason, so click on this link to the library’s online resources list and scroll down to N for NoveList. Click on that link to get to the service. If you are an adult, NoveList provides this same service for adult & teen books. Just click on that link instead of the K-8 one and all other login instructions are the same.
eBooks from OverDrive
What good is NoveList if you can’t come checkout books, right? Good thing the library subscribes to eBook services! Click here for the link to the Overdrive Children & Teens service. There are eBooks galore on there, and hopefully with the right amount of luck what you find on NoveList will be on Overdrive.
In order to read these titles you have a few options. If you are accessing it from a desktop computer, you can download Adobe Digital Editions. If you are accessing it from a mobile device or tablet, you will have to download Libby (Free) from your App Store. Why do you need these extra programs? eBook file types may only be read by those certain programs. Overdrive should walk you through this process for both device options.
No Algonquin Card?
Your home library most likely subscribes to many of these same sources. They are very popular in Libraryland. Check your home library’s online resources. You can do many of these same things, you just have to go through the proper channels.
If you know you live in our Library District, you can still apply for a library card online. This will grant you access to our online services.