One Student, One School & One Library Card at a Time

About the Program

Category: Libraries (Best in Category)

Year: 2017

Library Link is the partnership between Montgomery County Public Libraries (MCPL), MD, and Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) which provides MCPS Elementary, Middle and High School students with the opportunity to obtain a free library card that can be used at any of the MCPL branches, have access to a wide range of materials and resources available through the public library system, and extend their learning beyond the school day. Library Link was Montgomery County’s response to the ConnectED Library Challenge, a 2013 White House nationwide initiative that encouraged library directors to work with their elective officials and school leaders to provide a library card to every child enrolled in schools in their communities as well as to provide wider access to the learning resources and books from America’s libraries. With this same goal, Library Link was launched in 2016 pursuing to provide a library card to approximately 160,000 students attending MCPS 202 schools. Its implementation became challenging. While other library systems in the country were able to merge their databases with their school systems’ records to issue library cards using the students’ IDs, MCPL was not able to do so and had to find different creative ways to implement Library Link successfully. MCPL executed Library Link one school at the time, making the experience both personal and global. When the initial execution of Library Link at several schools did not produce the expected results with only a small percentage of students able to obtain library cards, MCPL rapidly adapted its approach, developing an innovative and resourceful method that was 100 percent successful. With this new method, all students started receiving MCPL activated library cards with 24/7 access to online resources; and even better, the connection between the students and their local library was made.