Open eBooks Offers Students Access to Digital Reading
Open eBooks, a White House digital reading initiative and e-reading app that will make thousands of e-books available to children around the country, is launching today.
The Open eBooks initiative was announced by President Barack Obama in early 2015. The program provides support to the ConnectEd Intitative, a coalition of 30 community groups devoted making sure local students have access to library cards and educational resources. The program will make more than $250 million e-books donated by major US. Trade book publishers available to low income households.
The program has released a video featuring First Lady Michelle Obama that highlights the program as a unique learning opportunity for children.
The Open eBooks inititive provides digital infrastructure to for reading, offering children from low income households the opportunity to accss a world class e-book library. A coalition of literacy, library, publishing and technology partners joined together to make the Open eBooks program possible. The initiative’s partners -- Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), First Book, and The New York Public Library (NYPL), with support from digital books distributor Baker & Taylor -- created the app, curated the eBook collection, and developed a system for distribution and use
Among the publishers that have donated e-books to the program are National Geographic, Bloomsbury, Candlewick, Cricket Media, Hachette, HarperCollins, Lee & Low, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster.
