IndyPL owns a sizable e-Book collection and envisioned sharing it to avoid schools making huge e-Book investments. By working with Baker & Taylor, a product was developed, allowing schools and IndyPL to pool their resources. Students and faculty access the pool with the IndyPL library card increasing library usage and providing a convenient one-stop e-Book access for classroom and student use. Problems surrounding school versus public library licensing will be addressed as well.

Key elements include a shared e-Books pool accessible to schools, a library card campaign for students and faculty and most importantly, building a relationship with participating schools. Each school contributes e-Books to the pool and IndyPL places all their e-Books for children in the pool as well. Children moving between schools have consistent access to e-Resources with their public library card. Multiple copies of a title for classrooms would be available through the shared pool.

Schools can redirect funds from e-Book resources to other essential student needs. Sharing e-Books not only prevents the waste of resources, but improves student performance. An independent evaluation of school partners at IndyPL found students engage in deeper and better research using rich electronic sources, and students experience more academic success. IndyPL is beta testing the e-Book shared pool with nine schools in the fall and will include all schools in 2018.