Green River Partners with the King County Library System
By: Margo Mead
Editor-in-Chief
Published October 17, 2018
Green River College has created a new partnership with the King County Library System (KCLS) allowing each Green River student to have an online KCLS library card.
This will give Green River students access to everything KCLS offers electronically.
In 2017, KCLS had a service area of 1.41 million people and 2,049-square-miles, operating in 36 cities, seven unincorporated areas and 18 school districts, according to kcls.org. That reach will now expand to Green River College.
According to Jennifer Dysart, the dean of library and media services at Green River, Green River’s resources “aren’t necessarily for your leisure pleasure.” The library has a focused selection that supports classes offered at the school. Due to this, Holman Library has directed many students towards the electronic resources KCLS offers.
With most of the Green River population living within Peirce 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.” The college’s new agreement with KCLS will help to combat this problem as students can now easily access the information using their Green River College email address.
KCLS is one of the top circulating libraries in North America for electronic books, while also offering the books in multiple languages. This agreement will give students the freedom to explore information outside of the courses at Green River.
The agreement will also give students access to KCLS language-learning resource Mango Languages, in addition to Rosetta Stone, which is already offered at the college.
Each Green River student’s email will now serve as an account to access all the resources on the KCLS website kcls.org. The login for these accounts is GRC followed by the first part of the student’s email before the domain name for the username and the last four letters of that username for the password.
“This account only supplements a traditional library card,” said Business Analysis Manager for KCLS, Jennifer Wiseman. If a student wants to check out 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.
“The nice thing about this is that students don’t have to worry about a fine,” Dysart said. Electronic items are automatically checked back in when they’re due.
The conversation between Green River and King County Library Services was started by John Knowlton, a member of the KCLS library advisory board in Enumclaw and head of the journalism department at Green River.
The first meeting between Knowlton, Dysart, and KCLS was held in January 2018. Since then both have been working on the project preparing it to be ready by the first day of fall quarter.
KCLS first launched these school partnerships in 2015, piloting them at the Bellevue School District and eventually offering 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, with Green River launching soon after. Bellevue College is also working with KCLS to launch this type of 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.
