National Library Week is April 23-29, 2023. It allows us to promote our local libraries and their workers. Find more about here at the American Library Association.
Because I know most of you online only, I thought I’d share my favorite online libraries with you (click here for updates to the list):
For Children
- Aesop for Children–collection of fables
- Actively Learn–add PDFs of your choice to a library that can be annotated, read, and shared.
- Audio Books–apps for books purchased through Audio Books (and free ones)
- Bookopolis–focused on student reading
- Books that Grow–read a story at many different reading levels
- Class Literature
- Epic–a reading library for kids, 15,000 books; most digital devices
- RAZ Kids–wide variety of reading levels, age groups, with teacher dashboards
- Reading Rainbow–library of books; free to try
- Tumblebooks (fee)–focused on student reading
For All Ages
- Free Books–download any of our 23,469 classic books, and read
- Actively Learn–add PDFs of your choice to a library that can be annotated, read, and shared.
- Bookopolis–focused on student reading
- Books that Grow–read a story at many different reading levels
- Class Literature
- Epic–a reading library for kids, 15,000 books; most digital devices
- Free Books–download any of our 23,469 classic books, and read
- Great Books Online by Bartleby
- Gutenberg Project
- IBooks–amazing way to download and read books.
- International Library
- Internet Archive— Internet Archive offers over 12,000,000 freely downloadable books and texts. There is also a collection of 550,000 modern eBooks that may be borrowed by anyone with a free archive.org account.
- Kindle–read ebooks, newspapers, magazines, textbooks and PDFs on an easy-to-use interface.
- Librivox–free public domain audio books
- Loyal Books
- Many Books–Over 33,000 ebooks that can be browsed by language, author, title.
- Online Books Page
- Open Library
- OWL Eyes–for the classics
- RAZ Kids–wide variety of reading levels, age groups, with teacher dashboards
- Reading Rainbow–library of books; free to try
- Tumblebooks (fee)–focused on student reading
- Unite for books (free) — gorgeous, easy-to-navigate site.
Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.
Happy Library week. Libraries are worthy of celebration. There should be more of them.
And they should stop cutting their hours and book offerings. Darn.
Definitely!
I loved going to the school libraries of all the schools I attended in the U.S., starting from 3rd grade all the way to college. In ninth grade, back when most districts in Florida still used the term “junior high school” instead of “middle school” and ninth grade was still “junior high” in the grand scheme of things, I donated a Space Shuttle Columbia poster to my school’s library at the end of the ’79-’80 school year because I was so fond of the librarians there. Happy National Library Week.
Me, too, Alex. It’s a wonderful escape place for kids who aren’t that social (like I was) and a great way to test out interests. Seeing all those books in one room is pretty special.