Green River College has created a new partnership with the King County Library System allowing each student to have an online KCLS library card.

This will give Green River students access to everything KCLS offers electronically.

Green River’s library resources “aren’t necessarily for your leisure pleasure,” said Jennifer Dysart, dean of library and media services for the college. Instead, the library has a focused selection that supports classes offered at the school.

“Because of this, Holman Library directs students to the public library for additional leisure reading,” said Dysart.

With most of the Green River students living within Pierce or King County, many have already signed up for a traditional library card.

“What we find as we’re helping students in the library is that they have a KCLS library card, but they don’t have it with them and they don’t know the number,” Dysart said.

The college’s new agreement with KCLS will help combat this problem because students will essentially have a virtual library card that will provide access to KCLS resources using their college e-mail address.

Each Green River student’s e-mail address will now serve as an account to access all the resources on the KCLS website kcls.org; a student’s username will be their e-mail name preceded by GRC. For example, if a college e-mail account is jdoe57@mail.greenriver.edu, the KCLS sign-on name will be GRCjdoe57.

Additionally, the initial KCLS PIN number is the last 4 characters of the username. In this case, the PIN would be oe57.

In addition to giving students access to KCLS electronic resources, it will also give students access to KCLS language-learning resource Mango Languages, in addition to Rosetta Stone that is already offered at the college.

KCLS’ electronic resources are handy because they are checked in automatically when they’re due.

“The nice thing about this is that students don’t have to worry about a fine,” Dysart said.

But students will still need a traditional library card if they want to check out books or other physical items, said KCLS Business Analysis Manager Jennifer Wiseman.

If a student wants to checkout a physical item in person at one of the KCLS libraries, or use the library’s public computers, library staff can help them to sign up for a traditional card if they would like to do so, Wiseman added.

The partnership between Green River and King County Library Services was first proposed by John Knowlton, a member of the KCLS library advisory board in Enumclaw and head of the college journalism department.

The first meeting between Knowlton, Dysart and KCLS was held in January 2018. Since then both have been working on the “pilot” project preparing it to be ready by the first day of Fall quarter.

In addition to giving students access to KCLS electronic resources, it will also give students access to KCLS language-learning resource Mango Languages, in addition to Rosetta Stone that is already offered at the college.

KCLS is one of the top circulating libraries in North America for electronic books, while also offering the books in multiple languages. In 2017, KCLS had a service area of 1.41 million people and 2,049 square miles. It operated in 36 cities, seven unincorporated areas and 18 school districts, according to kcls.org.

KCLS first launched a school partnership in 2015 at the Bellevue School District, and eventually offered them to all public school districts K-12 in the King County region.

Since then, KCLS has expanded the program to include the Lake Washington Institute of Technology. Green River is the first (former community) college to participate with KCLS, but Bellevue College is also working on a similar partnership arrangement.

KCLS states that its strategic focus is to “create opportunity through meaningful connections.” That seems to be the case with this agreement as it will create more opportunity and resources for Green River students.