KYVL offers access to a wide variety of general purpose and specialty encyclopedias including Encyclopedia Americana, New Book of Knowledge and Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia. The Grolier titles also include Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia and Amazing Animals of the World. Amazing Animals is designed to educate elementary school age students on the many varieties and species of animals in our world. This resource unlocks the mysteries of the world’s creatures. Providing reference and media materials on 1200 animals, the database is rich with images that anyone can use for enjoyment and learning.

Looking closer at the New Book of Knowledge we recommend it as a perfect starting point for elementary school age students as a home work reference source or fact checker. The Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia American are targeted for middle school or older students and include media-rich content, as well as newspapers from across the world and an interactive atlas.

These resources provide informative, in-depth information on a broad range of topics A to Z and everything in between. In addition to the great information in these resources, KYVL increases the usability of the data by making it easy to deepen the research. The Grolier Encyclopedias provide links to high quality, vetted educational resources and KYVL sources, making it easy for users to explore a topic more fully through current resources.

KYVL Staff, August 6, 2013

KYVL provides all Kentuckians with equitable access to library resources and to a common foundation of quality online information for lifelong learning, working and living.

KYVL has been promoting our resources with Lexile for nearly 15 years to K12 and our Adult Education colleagues, even before Kentucky was an official MetaMetrics partner. During this time, our vendors Grolier/Scholastic and EBSCO have added or increased the content that has Lexile assignments and have also implemented Lexile as a search option. Kim’s video is a wonderful corroboration of all these efforts, in addition to being a wonderful resource in and of itself.

More Kentucky-centric Lexile resources:

• Lexile Measures Help Kentucky Fight Summer Reading Slide – by Kathy Mansfield, a former KDE consultant now back in Shelby County Schools.
• Lexile Find a Book Kentucky
• KDE & Summer Reading support

Individual districts and libraries would spend far more subscribing to these resources independently — over $20 million retail annually. The ability to negotiate state-wide access results in substantial savings for our state and ensures equal access to information for all Kentuckians.  Each district, each public library or college that chooses to opt out of KYVL will impact the cost for everyone.  Full participation from the school districts, public libraries and universities lowers the costs to each member — the more participation, the greater the distribution of costs.  Public libraries in many counties are already struggling and may not have adequate hours, technology, or staffing to handle higher costs for online resources and delivery of interlibrary loan materials.  Without an active subscription to KYVL,  a library will not be licensed to supply KYVL credentials to its users.

KYVL provides a courier service to move interlibrary loan and course materials between 405  stops each week at the public libraries, community & technical colleges, and public universities. KYVL provides this service at no cost. If you are not a KYVL member, courier service cannot be purchased.  You must be a KYVL member to participate in the ground courier service.  Your library may not be a lender but consider the mailing costs of returning the items borrowed for your patrons.

Information on can be found on the KYVL Advocacy page.  http://www.kyvl.org/advocate.shtm

About the funding model – http://www.kyvl.org/docs/FundingPPT.pdf

Who is participating?  Check the Advocacy page – we track our members.

2011 Library Media Survey

Hello Fellow Librarians!

The Kentucky Department of Education has officially partnered this year with the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) for its annual national data collection project. Kentucky School Media Librarians are invited to participate in AASL’s “School Libraries Count!” survey (www.ala.org/aasl/slcsurvey). This survey is vital to AASL’s national advocacy efforts and our state’s advocacy efforts. School Media Librarians completing the survey will have access to a personalized report to use locally for their own advocacy efforts. Deadline: March 18, 2011. New questions in this year’s survey cover digital citizenship curriculum in school library programs.

A short survey with questions specific to Kentucky School Media Librarians is also available. The KY-specific survey takes approximately 5 minutes to complete, and the data from it will be used with data from the national survey to create a snapshot of our state’s library media programs. Even if you choose not to complete the AASL survey, please take the time to answer the 11 brief questions at the link below. The survey link will be active through March 31. http://www.education.ky.gov/KDE/Instructional+Resources/Library+Media/Kentucky+School+Library+Media+Survey+2011.htm.

Feel free to contact me with any questions. Thank you for participating in this important task!

Kathy
Kathy Mansfield
Library Media / Textbook Consultant
kathy.mansfield@education.ky.gov