Yesterday morning, the large and colorful Digital Bookmobile drove onto campus and parked in the quad for its one day visit to SCHS. Its doors were open all day for students to learn how to access SCHS’s ebook and audiobook collection, which is powered by Overdrive.

Librarian Seana Shelby asked the Bookmobile to make a stop here on its cross-country trip. She wanted to bring awareness to the school’s online collection, which has not been very frequently used in the past.

“I wanted to make sure all students understood how to sign up so they could access all the resources we had,” Shelby said.

The Bookmobile and its crew, Joe Skelley, Laurie Bajda, and their driver, Ira Newman, are travelling across North America and stopping at schools and libraries along the way. They started in Wisconsin in June, and have since visited 48 states and two provinces.

The purpose of the trip is to raise awareness of the services Overdrive provides, according to Skelley. Overdrive is a company that provides digital books for schools and libraries. Any student of a participating school, or card-holder of a participating library, can access Overdrive’s digital collection for free, and the company wants people to take advantage of that.

“We want as many students as possible using our services,” Skelley said.

To access the ebook and audiobook collection, a student can either download the Overdrive app, or go online to santaclarahs.lib.overdrive.com. From there, all they need is their student ID  to access to all the books in the SCHS collection. All digital books, like the physical books, are hand-picked and added to the collection by the school librarians.

Students who weren’t aware of this resource before are eager to start using it.

“It’s actually so cool,” sophomore Emily Chao said. “Instead of bringing a book everywhere, I can have it on my phone. That way, I could read on a vacation or a car ride without having to pack lots of books.”

According to Skelley, Overdrive’s next priority is adding textbooks to their collection. This service would greatly benefit students.

“If they had textbooks, I would use [Overdrive] on a daily basis,” sophomore Francisco Mejia said.

However, even without textbooks, Shelby hopes the ebook and audiobook collection will make reading even more convenient to students.

“Once all students are one-to-one with chromebooks, they can check out digital and audiobooks anytime. They won’t even need to go to the library,” Shelby said.