Yolo County Libraries are beginning an ambitious project with Esparto Unified School District that could result in significant developments for Yolo County schools.
The library has partnered with the school district to explore ways to get more of the library’s vast resources into the hands of students. However, for Yolo County Librarian Mark Fink, this is beyond just having students borrow books.
“This isn’t just about students borrowing books from the library. This is also gives them instant access to our online resources — that they can access 24-hours a day through our website," said Fink. “Those resources provide authoritative sources which are just better and more credible than looking for information on Google or using Wikipedia.”
For Esparto Unified, those resources now include:
- Encyclopedia Britannica
- eBooks
- eMagazines
- eAudiobooks
- All other library materials and research databases
How the project developed
The project started about a year ago after state funding brought together libraries in an effort to reduce barriers to library access. In addition, there were efforts to unify libraries and school districts.
With the partnership between Esparto Unified and the Yolo County Library, students will be able to use their student ID number as a library card, essentially putting a library card in the hands of every student.
Their ID number will give them access to library books and online resources. Teachers and students will also be taught how to use the online resources.
“We want to provide that information for teachers and students, so getting into the schools, getting into the resources that are available to them is also part of the project,” said Fink. “That’s why we’re experimenting first in Esparto with the best way to do this and then we hope to roll out to the other school districts in our service area.”
What about other schools?
The library took another ambitious step while they were laying the groundwork for the Esparto project.
“One of the things that we wanted to do was create a policy that removed as many barriers as possible so that students could make the most of their library card,” Fink said.
They, along with the Board of Supervisors, eliminated the entire concept of late fees for every student under the age of 18 in Yolo County. In order to keep every student on the same level, they also erased all existing late fees on accounts for Yolo County students under the age of 18.
In total, the move erased $123,000 in fines and fees from about 7,000 student accounts. It also opened up 2,700 student accounts that were blocked due to the fines and fees that they had accumulated.
“We’re really proud that we were able to do that and that we had the support of the Board of Supervisors,” Fink noted.
Even though late fees for students are a thing of the past as of Jan. 1, measures were put into place to make sure that the late library items are finally returned.
An item taken for more than 23 days ultimately qualifies as a lost item. Students can get billed for unreturned items and have library services suspended, but, if that item gets returned, they won’t pay a penalty.
“There are other libraries in the country that have implemented the model that we have just undertaken, and they’ve actually found that it leads to more children using their library cards [and] having them borrow more material from the library," Fink said, adding that there was little evidence that showed problems in getting library materials back.
The Esparto Unified project helped bring the increased library access to other students in Yolo County through fee elimination, but, the experiment for library resources will take some time before it reaches schools outside of Esparto Unified.
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