A new partnership with the Spokane Public Library allows students and employees of the Community Colleges of Spokane free and easy access to numerous online journals, databases, instructional services, workforce trainings, reference centers and an entertainment streaming service with more than 30,000 titles.
CCS and the Library signed a memorandum of understanding in July in which CCS students and employees may register for access to the Library’s digital services using their usernames and passwords for their CCS accounts.
“This new partnership greatly expands the instructional and educational resources available to our students, faculty and staff,” said Valerie S. Senatore, Ph.D., provost at the Community Colleges of Spokane.
“The Spokane Public Library and the Community Colleges of Spokane share many common goals related to the education of people in the community,” said Andrew Chanse, executive director of the Spokane Public Library.
The agreement will be activated Sept. 30 with the connection of a single webpage at CCS on which users sign in and are linked to a Library webpage to register for access to the Library’s “digital” branch.
The partnership provides additional academic resources beyond those currently available through the libraries at Spokane Community College and Spokane Falls Community College, including more journal subscriptions and data sources for faculty and student projects, Senatore said. The library also has a data analyst who can assist the campus community, she said.
One example of an additional resource is Pronunciator which provides language learning in over 80 languages with special courses for health care workers. Training programs such as Lynda.com, Gale Courses, Learning Express and ProCitizen offer homework help, business training, technology skills building, test preparation and career services that students and employees will find useful.
The new access to downloadable and streaming content includes Kanopy with streaming videos and Hoopla with downloadable ebooks, audiobooks, television episodes, movies and music. Another service, Overdrive, has a large selection of books to download while the ebook service, Tumblebooks, will be helpful to the preschool education students at Head Start as well as to parents looking for kid-friendly content.
“We’re delighted to be able to expand access to even more members of our community through this exciting partnership,” said Chanse.