Media Advisory FOR RELEASE: Monday, October 20, 2008 Scotia-Glenville offers E-Books to students and teachers thanks to $4,000 donation from the Scotia Rotary Scotia-Glenville students now have access to reliable, non-fiction information 24 hours a day and seven days a week through E-books and the Internet. And, it is better than a Google search, which might turn up hundreds of thousands of references that are not current. It is difficult for students to find reliable and current information by simply searching the Internet. “Students with research based projects will be able to tap in these resources any place they have Internet access,” said Janice Tunison, the high school library media specialist. “The potential is endless: teachers could potentially offer homework assignments, links to EdLine, reading or synthesis activities,” she said. With local libraries facing budget cutbacks and closing early or not being open on some days, E-Books is a way to ensure that students don’t miss out. Scotia-Glenville and several other school districts joined the E-Books consortium through the Capital Region BOCES this year. Scotia-Glenville was able to join the program through a generous $4,000 donation from the Scotia Rotary. E-Books is a wonderful complement to the several research databases available on-line to students at Scotia-Glenville, Tunison added. Library media specialists in each school have information about how students and families can connect to the databases, including E-Books. She also noted that the E-Books collections can be converted to eight language - Spanish, French, German, Korean, Japanese, Italian, Portuguese and Chinese (simplified) – with the click of a button. That could be used by both second language students at school as well as by students whose native language is not English. The 15 books in the collection, with titles like American Eras, New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Dictionary of American History, Encyclopedia of US History, include about 50 on-line volumes. Unlike the usual data base collection, the E-Books collection belongs to the school district. The Rotary’s $4,000 purchased access at the high school, middle school and four elementary schools forever. In the future, if the district were to resubscribe, it would keep the volumes currently in the collection and add several others, said Linda Fox, director of Library Services at the Capital Region BOCES. Here is a link to the E-Books page at BOCES. She said 30 schools are part of the consortium, which kicked off this year. Other districts involved in it include Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake, Shenendehowa, Schenectady, Niskayuna, Mohonasen, Voorheesville, Cohoes and Guilderland. “This is an amazing opportunity for our students,” said Fox. “I think this is the wave of the future and the way of the present. One of the things we know about student usage is that kids are using this information at night, on weekends and at 4 a.m. on Wednesdays. The school library is now open more than your gym.” The BOCES service also is state aidable, meaning that part of the cost of the E-Books program will be refunded to the school district by the state through BOCES aid. For further information, contact Janice Tunison, head library media specialist at Scotia-Glenville, at 386-4364; Linda Fox, director, Capital Region BOCES library services, 464-5101 or Robert Hanlon, Communications, at 386-4343.