Why eBooks?

We at ELFS love physical books. But we also love ebooks for the features they offer. We believe that, if embraced, the improvement in access digital books offer could make a huge difference to children’s reading. Digital books are available whenever and wherever you are: an elibrary is always accessible – be the child at school, at home, at granny’s house, on holiday or anywhere in between. Through their enhanced features – increased font size, screen background and audio read overs – digital books also facilitate access to literature for non standard readers. 

Why a National School Digital Library?

Of course, the benefits of digital over physical books are available to schools now: they are free to spend their budget (if there is any) on ebooks and audio books rather than physical books.

But this misses a crucial point: if centralised, digital offers the potential for huge efficiency savings. Because digital books are not tied to a location, a digital book not being read in a school in Hull can be picked up and read in a school in Liverpool. Sharing books across space means fewer books sitting unread on shelves, and that means a lower cost per read. A central children’s library of digital books accessible to all is more efficient than multiple individual school digital libraries. Moreover, a national resource has the added advantage that it gives all children equal access to books, making the biggest difference to those children who are currently the least well served.

We therefore propose the establishment of a National eBook Library for Schools as the most efficient means of providing maximum choice for minimum cost.

The ELFS Core Elibrary

Whilst we’re waiting for government to implement a National School Digital Library there is still the problem that children do not have access to enough quality literature. So we thought we’d get started on this ourselves: in September 2025 we will launch the ELFS Core Elibrary – the first nationally available elibrary for children accessible through participating schools.

Pilot School Elibraries

In addition to our core elibrary we will continue to help individual schools to raise money to fund their own bespoke elibraries. By working with a school to understand its pupils’ needs and wants, we will help provide an extra resource of ebooks to supplement the ELFS Core Elibrary and a school’s physical library. 

More about our pilot schools