Anne Endres

LIS 725
SOIS Education Foundation-Helping Hand Grant Proposal Assignment
June 4, 2020

What is our project? How it will work? What are the benefits?

Since 2014, District 97 of Oak Park, IL and Lincoln School have supplied each student

from grade 3 to 5 with a personal learning device. These serve the students with a variety of

learning options throughout the day and at home as well. Our mission at the Lincoln School

Library is to encourage and cultivate students to become life-long readers, with fiction and non-

fiction books that are collected each year. Each school year, we receive a budget to select new

books to add to our collection and we are always looking for greater options to explore.

This spring, as I met with our classroom teachers and our reading specialist, we

wondered if there were a way to use the personal learning devices to reach our Special-Ed

students as well as our reluctant and lower readers. Then the idea was born: what if we were

able to purchase some audio books?

Audio books have grown in popularity in recent years and studies have shown that

students with strong listening skills are better learners, so the why not start an audio library?

District 97 supports its libraries with Destiny Discovery, which could allow students from third

through fifth grades the opportunity to explore and check out audio books from the library.

These audio books could be used in the classroom or at home, are available 24/7, and the

student can listen anywhere. Students can share them with their families, can choose books at

a higher level because they don’t have to decode the text visually, and can access and enjoy

them instantly.
 By focusing on CCSS.ELS-LIT 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3, students will

improve their ability to quote, recall, and summarize texts. To promote adoption, we intend to

hold audio book listening sessions in the library. A small portion of our funding will be used to

purchase a public address system so that students will be able to easily hear the stories. This

system will also improve these sessions for any students with disabilities.

When we presented our proposal this spring at a PTO meeting, they were very excited

about these potential benefits and agreed to match any external grant funding up to $1500.

Using the Destiny Discovery library management system, we will have the ability to monitor

circulation of the audio books. We can collect usage data for use when deciding what to add to

the collection next school year. The collection will be ongoing and funded for the entire school

years of 2020–2021 and 2021–2022, and if it proves to be popular, we will look to make it part

of our yearly budget.

I will be the primary person for ordering materials and implementing this addition to our

library. We will need to budget a small amount of funds for IT setup, but once it is up and going,

it will run on the Destiny Discovery platform and need little intervention from the librarian.

If chosen for the grant, we plan to announce it on our school blog, in our monthly library

letter, and set up section in the library highlighting how to check out the audio books. When

school is under way, we will introduce the audio library, explain how to use it, and we will all

listen to an audio book together during library time.

Press Release

Lincoln School is pleased to announce the creation of our Audio Book Library Collection.

The SOIS Education foundation has awarded Lincoln School a grant for $1500 to launch our
audio library starting in the fall of 2020. The PTO has offered to match this award with an

additional $1500. This funding will let us order more than 55 audio books from a diverse

selection of authors, highlighting our global community. It will also pay for a small PA system for

the library and cover setup costs. We hope the students will be as excited as we are to explore

our newest addition to Lincoln’s school library.

Project Budget

Audio books 59 books @ $44 each $2596

IT support 4 hours @ $50 / hour $200
Publicity materials 5 posters @ $10 each $50
Public address system 1 @ $150 $150
TOTAL $2996

Funding:

 $1500 from SOIS Education Foundation

 $1500 from Lincoln School PTO