Chattanooga Public Library and Hamilton County Schools have formed a partnership to increase students’ access to e-books and digital audiobooks by combining the library’s and school’s digital reading resources in one app. 
 
The library-school partnership provides safe access to thousands of age-appropriate titles for students’ use inside the classroom, at home and anywhere 24/7. Through Sora, the new student reading app for Hamilton County Schools, students can now borrow from the school’s collection of classroom and pleasure reading, as well as from Chattanooga Public Library’s juvenile and young adult digital collection. Students can log into the library’s digital collection through Sora using their school credentials rather than requiring a separate library card. In addition, Sora supports teachers by offering education-specific tools like achievements, exportable notes and reading progress that encourage individualized learning.
 
“Since 2014, the Chattanooga Public Library has worked with Hamilton County schools to provide every student with a public library card, and this new partnership allows us to expand that relationship and offer more support to school libraries,” said Lee Hope, head of Children's Services at Chattanooga Public Library. “Students can now easily access our digital book collection with their student IDs, and we can ensure that our e-book and e-audio collection offers everything on the K-12 curriculum lists. With student checkouts on the rise since January, we’re already seeing the success of this partnership.”
 
Becky Covington, director of K-12 Librarians for Hamilton County Schools, added, “During the pandemic, our partnership with the Chattanooga Public Library has been essential in supporting learning of our students. Our Hamilton County Schools' librarians identified the need to provide students more access to e-book and e-audio collections and reached out to Chattanooga Public Library to ensure our students had access to the texts through the Sora app to support our standards/curriculum. We appreciate the actions of CPL to support students, families and teachers."
 
The Sora app was named one of TIME’s Best Inventions 2019 and is available for Hamilton County Schools students to download through the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, and on Chromebooks that support the Google Play Store. It is also available for use in web browsers at https://soraapp.com on any computer.
 
The entire Chattanooga community can also borrow and read Chattanooga Public Library’s complete e-book and digital audiobook collection with a valid library card through the award-winning Libby app. The library’s locally selected collection offers digital books including bestsellers and new releases. Readers of all ages can select from virtually every subject ranging from mystery, romance, children’s, business and more. Libby can be used on any major device or computer, including Apple, Android, Chromebook and Kindle (U.S. only).
 
The Libby and Sora apps were built by OverDrive and OverDrive Education respectively. To learn more, visit www.overdrive.com/apps/libby/ and https://company.overdrive.com/k-12-schools/discover-sora/.