Digital Smarts - School Libraries Go More Digital During the Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has altered how students interact with school libraries. In one example, Susan Gauthier, a library services director in a Louisiana district, says that six years ago she directed librarians to limit spending on e-books to 10% of their budgets, but now e-book usage is on the rise and she is reconsidering the future of schools' collections. Interestingly enough, high schoolers have put up the most resistance to the ebook transition. Gauthier suspects one factor is the district’s focus on purchasing perpetual ebooks, the ones libraries can access forever, over more popular titles that with restrictive licenses. For example, students may login to the database of titles looking for Angie Thomas’ bestselling young adult novel “The Hate U Give,” but Gauthier has to weigh demand against the fact that the district would lose access to it after 26 borrows because of publishers’ pricing models.