21 February 2022
Axis 360 at Anne Sullivan School.

After years of hearing other librarians talk about Axis 360, our District librarians were anxious to give it try. It seemed even more ideal after having limited access to books during the Pandemic. With our students now having 1:1 devices, this was the perfect time to really push ebooks and having a subscription to Axis 360 would increase our inventory greatly. The My Library Is... grant seemed like the perfect way to test the subscription, and our district was willing to maintain the subscription after the initial year provided by the grant.

Our District has students who are English language learners as well as lower income students who don't always have the opportunity to go to the public library and whose own home libraries are limited. Having Axis 360 this year gave all our students a wider variety of books, more available copies of popular books, and the ability to have books at their fingertips when they were not able to check out books from our school libraries or the public libraries. We gave an introductory professional development workshop to our staff on how to use Axis 360 effectively in their classrooms. We also took advantage of the online videos that Axis 360 provides.

The My Library Is... grant allowed us to get this program in motion. We are so thankful for the opportunity and look forward to maintaining the ability to put more digital books in our students' hands.

Today's guest blog post is by Betsy Yager. Betsy is a Library Media Specialist for Anne Sullivan School in Prospect Heights, IL. In 2021, the school was awarded a RAILS My Library Is... Grant for School Libraries.

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