Eckville Municipal Library, alongside all those under the Parkland Regional Library umbrella, are offering a host of online resources.
To prevent the spread of COVID-19 people are staying home and Parkland Regional Library has added new resources to prl.ab.ca to help keep patrons busy during the outbreak.
New to the eLibrary is the TeenBookCloud, the AudioBook Cloud, the Romance ebook Cloud and TumbleBooks, which has children’s books and math books for kids in kindergarten to Grade 6.
Also new to access from home is a newspaper archive and ancestry.com’s library edition.
Jen Kendall, consultant librarian with PRL, says normally the Ancestry Library can only be access within the library due to its strict licensing, but it has been made available at home due to the circumstances.
“If anyone you know has been putting off searching their genealogy they can do that from home now as long as they have the Parkland card,” said Kendall in a phone interview.
Majority of the online resources require a PRL membership to access them via a log in.
Anyone without a membership card or an expiring card can register by calling the Eckville Municipal Library at 403-746-3240 and leaving a voice mail.
Online resources are not new to PRL libraries as there is a collection of permanent resources available to members.
“The main ones that I think people are going to find helpful right now are the Solaro homework help and then cloudLibrary and rbDigital [eAudio],” said Kendall, “whether you want to learn something and do researching or you just want to check out for a little bit, we have something for all that.”
Solaro, which Kendall described as one of her favourites, is homework help designed to fit to Alberta’s Grades 3-12 curriculum and is a good resource for parents who may get stuck during homeschooling.
She added the cloudLibrary is mostly ebooks, while RBdigital eAudio contains books, as well as magazines, podcasts and comic books.
The PressReader resource also magazines available to download.
Additionally, Kendall highlighted Niche Academy, which is geared towards patrons who are unfamiliar with the resources as it has video tutorials on each platform as well as on topics such as resume writing and Microsoft Word.
“It’s got a whole bunch of video tutorials for that and it also provides a tutorial under each resource so people can figure out how to access it before they try to go in there and figure it out,” explained Kendall.
The eLibrary also features the Centre for Equitable Library Access (CELA) and the National Network for Equitable Library Service (NNELS) for patrons with print disabilities.