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Health & Fitness

Children's and Young Adult eBooks Multiply Thanks to Grants and Donations

In the past two months, the library's budget for eBooks for kids and teens has grown from nothing to...$3,750 of donations and grants!

We have recently received $3,750 for children’s and young adult eBooks!!!

Exciting developments for parents of “digital natives," the name for this generation of kids who have grown up never knowing a world without Internet and computers, smart phones and other devices. Many parents and children expressed disappointment in the lack of children’s titles available through our new Carbon Lehigh Downloadable Library (CLDL) eBook collection, a consortium of 12 libraries in Lehigh and Carbon Counties. And YOUR library has responded.

Wednesday night, I attended a grant award ceremony for the Junior League of the Lehigh Valley, where the library received the group’s largest grant allocation: $1,500 towards increasing the availability of picture and chapter books in CLDL! I applied for the grant about a month ago, and we received the exciting news at the end of last week that despite a record number of applications, we would receive the entire amount requested for our project, Digital Collection Connection: Bringing eBooks to Kids. Thank you, JLLV!!

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But I said $3,750, right?

In addition to this grant money going towards picture and chapter books, about two months ago we received a very generous donation by some long-time and very supportive patrons. The teenagers in this family grew up using their public library and are all avid readers. Through the generous personal donation of $750 and the 2 for 1 matching of the patron’s employer, Air Products, we’ve funneled this money towards middle grade and young adult eBooks, many that have cross-over appeal to adults. Wow!! Thank you to this donor family!!

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In case you didn’t know, Air Products considers the public library an “arts group”, and above their normal 1:1 matching for employee donations, they match 2:1 for “arts” organizations. So if you’re an Air Products employee, even if you donated $10 to the library, your donation would increase to $30, which would cover the cost of a hardcover book. Think about that: your $10 donation gets the library a hardcover book!

We’d be happy to share more with you about how you can donate to the library, whether you’re an Air Products employee or not. As with many government-funded organizations, public libraries, who thrive on serving all people and helping you save costs, have seen significant budget cuts over the past couple of years.

So wow! Going from a few “Dora” books in CLDL a few months ago and not much hope for more… to being able to nearly rival the adult collection in purchasing eBooks for kids and teens in just a matter of months… I am so excited!! Reading eBooks on a mobile device, the “gadget factor," is a huge incentive, especially for reluctant readers and boys. I can’t wait to see how this collection will be used!

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