Kentucky Virtual Library

The deadline has passed for districts to return their letters of intent to Kentucky Virtual Library regarding membership.  We are allowing a grace period so folks have some extra time to work with decision makers within their district to help make the case for opting in for KYVL.

We have almost 100 school districts who have said “yes” to KYVL membership for this year, giving access through June 2011.  But we have around 70 we haven’t heard from yet. We are currently short about one-third in the assessment to be collected from the public K12 group.  That means we have a significant shortfall for this group and have to cover the deficit somehow.  We have nearly 100% participation from our other user groups and you can track that http://www.kyvl.org/advocate.shtm.

With participation in KYVL, Kentucky schools have the advantage of group buying power AND over $1 million from agencies subsidizing member contributions.   If schools and districts were on their own, the 25+  research databases would cost nearly $10 per student.    Consumer Reports, Rolling Stone,  School Library Journal, and Ranger Rick are available online to all members because of KYVL’s contracts and the power of so many coming together to share the costs.

The Top 10 KYVL databases used by KYVL’s public K12 users last year were:

Grolier Online Encyclopedias
Middle Search Plus
Newspaper Source
MAS Ultra
TOPICsearch
Academic Search Premier
Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia
Primary Search
MasterFILE Premier
ERIC

These same databases in addition to another fifteen (15) are used by many of Kentucky’s universities, colleges and community/technical colleges — students using these databases throughout their elementary and secondary education will be familiar with the resources when its time to do college-level research.  Or when they reach the workforce, the now adult Kentuckians can read foreign language newspapers online, or compare cars in Consumer Reports automotive edition, because they know where to go and how to do it.

Many resources are also Lexiled so you can choose the appropriate reading level for your student. Lexile can be used as a search criteria as well whether you are checking Novelist for a girl scientist hero fiction book for an advanced reader or perhaps, just articles from magazines or U.S. newspapers for a particular grade level.

We would like to hear from all districts by November 15^th. If you need search statistics, the cost for your district or the letter of intent sent to you to pass on to your superintendent, please contact Betsy Hughes.

We will begin cutting off access via IP and login, and finally by 17 December, we will block any non-member sites from accessing KYVL licensed resources.   If KYVL is important to your students, your community, please tell your leadership to keep KYVL available.

If you need examples or talking points, check out our Advocacy page:   http://www.kyvl.org/advocate.shtm

We’ve also posted the presentations we did in September, explaining the strategic planning and how the new funding model was created.

Long PPT  – http://www.kyvl.org/docs/FundingPPT.pdf
Short PPT – for school districts   http://www.kyvl.org/docs/FundingPPT_Supers.pdf

Thank you for your support!

Enid Wohlstein, Director of KYVL, and the KYVL Strategic Planning Steering Team:

Susan Brown (Transylvania University)
Carrie Cooper (Eastern Kentucky University)
Tara Cooper (Union College)
Charlene Davis (KDLA)
Kathy Mansfield (KDE)
Sheree Huber Williams, Chair (Jefferson Community and Technical College)