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Health & Fitness

District 181 Schools Earn Library Grants

Community Consolidated School District 181 Media Resource Centers (MRCs) are celebrating the receipt of the School District Library Grant from the Illinois State Library. The $3,000 grant is available to tax-supported public school districts that meet eligibility requirements and are part of a regional library system.

In previous years, the grant dollars have been used for a District subscription to Encyclopedia Britannica Online, eBooks shared throughout the District, and books chosen by the individual schools. For this year, the grant dollars are being used to purchase a subscription for NoveList K-8 Select, which links library catalogs to the NoveList database. Elm MRC Director Jill Berry, who wrote this year’s grant application, explains that when students access NoveList, they can search for titles and the system will recommend similar books that are available in the school’s collection. “Elm has had NoveList for a year,” she notes, “and we love it.” For each listed book, the NoveList system includes the genre, reviews, a description and the appropriate grade and age level for readers.

 

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Remaining grant funds will be used to purchase non-fiction books, which will be an even more significant component of the District’s curriculum because of the increased emphasis on non-fiction reading in the New Illinois Learning Standards Incorporating the Common Core. After a non-fiction book talk at Anderson's Bookshop in Downers Grove at the end of the 2012-13 school year, each MRC Director selected titles to strengthen their non-fiction collections. Purchases were done on a per capita basis, Berry notes, with more dollars given for larger student populations.

In related news, The Lane School’s MRC Director Stephanie Stieglitz received a grant in the amount of $4,000 for the purchase of multiple sets of print books about the United States. “As part of the State Smarts program,” Stieglitz explains, “each grade at The Lane School will use the books in order to gain a deeper understanding of the differences and similarities between each of the states.” The students’ projects will range from map-making at the kindergarten level to in-depth analyzation of the states at the fourth grade level. Funds for the “Back to Books” grant were made possible by a combination of dollars from the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services and the State of Illinois library funds. Secretary of State Jesse White noted in a press release shared with grant recipients, “I am pleased to be able to award these grants that will allow library users to be better educated and entertained. Our libraries perform so many essential tasks, but at their core, what our libraries do best is make books and other materials available to patrons.”

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