MyLibraryNYC works across NYC’s five boroughs and three library systems to offer enhanced library privileges, professional development, and special collections of 100,000+ PreK-12 items to help supplement school and classroom libraries. As separate entities working together to support educators, our challenge involved how to build a system-agnostic ordering platform — and special collection — for a large multi-partner initiative that: made ordering and selecting materials easier for MyLibraryNYC educators, created relationships between public and school libraries and fulfilled needs of 60,000+ NYC educators ranging from PreK-12.

A customized standalone interface was created for MyLibraryNYC’s special collection that allows educators to keyword search – and to order in just three clicks! We also expanded our collection to include more world language, audio, and nontraditional materials (graphic novels) and added commonly requested keywords and phrases to our item descriptions (i.e. unreliable narrator). Through our changes to improve the ordering experience and what we are offering, educators tell us how pleasantly surprised they are by the breadth of our offerings — such as Greek Mythology graphic novels! — and how easy it was to use.

Our collection goals were increased collection use and increased educator engagement. This year our circulation increased 100 percent with educator material engagement also increasing: “[MyLibraryNYC] opens up doors to fresh titles. To be able to change books year to year would be cost-prohibitive without the program.” An example is our interface’s capacity that allows keyword searching for ‘book club’ titles (which educators can then limit by Grade or Subject) – which has exposed educators to new and varied book club titles. This project has also given us vital insight into the information seeking behavior of school librarians and educators.