Detroit Country Day School

Students at Detroit Country Day School (Beverly Hills, MI) can access eBooks from the school’s collection as well as those offered by the State Library of Michigan through the Michigan Electronic Library (MeL).

This school year, special eBook collections were added for the Middle School and Upper School.  Additionally, Middle School Media Specialist Cheri Dobbs created Gale Virtual Reference Library subcollections and posted links to them on project resource pages on the library Web site.

For her project pages, Dobbs pulled in direct URLs and pictures of specific eBooks to direct the students’ research more closely.

Last December, Dobbs feared that she wouldn’t have time to fit 8th grade research assignments into her teaching schedule as history teachers began  assigning research.  The solution: Dobbs created an eBook subcollection for them and posted the link on the project resource page on my Web site. Then Dobbs recorded a screencast to engage student interest and demonstrate how to use the eBook collection.  They were very successful with finding what they needed.

When Dobbs added an eBook search widget to her library home page, usage soared -  in a 30-day period from February to March, 22% of the school’s annual total of eBook searches were recorded.

“The students love that they can download articles and use them offline,” said Dobbs. “Both students and teachers love that they are getting reliable, authoritative sources so easily.”