Selover Public Library and Highland Local Schools Team Up for Student Success

Community Partnership Connects K-12 Students with Public Library Access

The Selover Public Library in Chesterville, OH (Morrow County) – a member of the COOL consortium – recently completed an initiative together with the Highland Local Schools school district to provide all K-12 students borrower cards to access the library’s collection and other available resources.

The Selover and Highland ConnectED student library card provides each student with lending privileges not only to the library’s physical collection but access to e-resources like the Ohio Digital Library and Ohio Web Library. The project, led by Suzi Lyle, library director at Selover Public Library, aims to provide students with additional resources throughout their educational career even if they never have the chance to visit the public library. This comes as a great welcome to all at a much-needed time when travel and social distancing have hampered trips to the local library.

Through Selover’s continued partnership with OhioNET, over 650 student borrower accounts were batch created using data collected by the schools, giving these students instant access to the library’s collection and resources. Library staff delivered addressed envelopes containing a new library card and welcome letter en masse to the school district so that they could be distributed to each student without a needed visit to the library.

Whether staying connected – or getting “ConnectED” – libraries like the Selover Public Library continue to strive in finding innovative ways to provide borrowing access to new patrons through community-based partnerships, both old and new.