Librarians Share: How Fort Smith School District is Achieving Early Success

Fort Smith School District (AR) launched their digital collection a few short months ago and they are already seeing widespread adaptation from their student body. This great success comes from early marketing and keeping their students, staff and parents up to date, educated and excited about their services. Library Media Specialist Rebecca Howe agreed to share their story to help other schools see the same results!   What did you do to prepare your students/staff for your service? We trained all of our Library Media Specialists on the basics of OverDrive. Then, the LMS trained their staff and students at each school. We have also allowed parents and students to bring personal devices and have helped them to get started. We also recommended that they go to the public library for help. Our public library has used OverDrive for quite some time and has someone on staff to help assist patrons with their devices and issues they might have.   Have you done any special marketing promotions since your launch?A lot of the schools provided a parent night and introduced the OverDrive platform and BYOD program (Bring Your Own Device) to parents. We also sent out the promotional flyers that OverDrive provided for us.   We have an OverDrive link on every school website and our district website as well. We also have links to the software, Device Resource Center, and the How-to guides that OverDrive provides.   We plan on sending out a district wide phone call that goes to the entire staff and student body reminding them that OverDrive is available during the summer months. A lot of the elementary library media specialists plan on revisiting how to use OverDrive during the last week of classes.   What has contributed to your early successes? We have started allowing all students to participate in BYOD and log into Wi-Fi. They are allowed to use their personal devices to read and listen to books they have checked out and/or downloaded from OverDrive.  We made our BYOD user names and passwords the same as the OverDrive user names and passwords.   Since we have such a large number of netbooks issued to students for classroom use, I created a flyer that contained screen shots of how to download Adobe Digital Editions and OverDrive Media Console. I also provided one with screen shots on how to create an Adobe ID and why you create one.   Some schools made posters for each classroom that explained the different ways you can read and listen to e-books/audiobooks on desktops and netbooks using OverDrive Read and Disney Digital Books to enjoy immediately or to download the e-books/audiobooks to Adobe Digital Editions or OverDrive Media Console.  We gave our elementary students very explicit but simple instructions on how to get started. We also highly recommended checking out OverDrive Read and Disney Online titles while at school on the netbooks and desktops. We have found that these are the simplest for the elementary students to use.   What has the student reaction been? Our students have loved using OverDrive! They have also loved being able to bring their own devices and reading and listening to books from those as well.   Rebecca Howe is a Library Media Specialist for Barling Elementary, part of the Fort Smith School District.

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