OverDrive Education Strengthens Curriculum Focus with Acquisition of TeachingBooks.net

Combines expansive collection of supplemental materials with industry's largest digital book catalog and award-winning Sora reading app

CLEVELAND, Oct. 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- OverDrive, the leading digital reading platform for libraries and schools, announced today that it has acquired TeachingBooks.net. TeachingBooks creates and maintains the leading source of supplemental materials that perpetuates informed, joyful reading across the curriculum while furthering successful literacy outcomes.

The acquisition of TeachingBooks significantly enhances OverDrive Education's Sora reading app and platform to serve K-12 schools around the world. TeachingBooks provides K-12 schools with more than 265,000 curated materials from trusted educational sources, as well as their own proprietary content, to enrich how a book is taught in the classroom. For educators, these resources include literacy and standards connections, booklists and collection analysis, teaching ideas, diverse books toolkit, readers' advisory, vocabulary lists, interactive games and more. TeachingBooks.net is currently licensed and available to over 55,000 schools and libraries worldwide, serving more than 24 million students.

"I started TeachingBooks twenty-one years ago with a dream of empowering every reader to connect to and learn from the author the moment they are reading a book," said Nick Glass, Founder and Head of TeachingBooks. "I'm so honored to be moving forward with OverDrive, building upon the TeachingBooks foundation that colleagues and customers have spectacularly built. With the merging of these amazing literacy services, we will enable readers, librarians and educators to benefit from both the book and impactful enrichment materials."

"TeachingBooks has compiled and created one of the most valuable collection of resources for the books that are essential for student reading," said Steve Potash, Founder and CEO of OverDrive. "OverDrive's Marketplace, the largest catalog of digital books for student reading programs, combined with TeachingBooks' vast catalog of supplemental materials, provides educators and librarians a single source for both assigned curriculum and self-selected reading."

The terms of the acquisition were not announced.

About OverDrive
OverDrive strives to create "a world enlightened by reading." Serving a growing network of 73,000 libraries and schools in 88 countries, OverDrive delivers the industry's largest digital catalog of ebooks, audiobooks, magazines and other content through award-winning apps. The Libby reading app for libraries is one of Popular Mechanics' 20 Best Apps of the Decade, while the student reading app Sora is one of TIME's Best Inventions of 2019. OverDrive recently acquired Kanopy , the leading streaming video service for public libraries and academic institutions. Founded in 1986, OverDrive is based in Cleveland, Ohio USA and was named a Certified B Corp in 2017. www.overdrive.com

About TeachingBooks.net
TeachingBooks began in 2000 with a dream of enabling every reader to learn from the author of a book the moment they are reading it. Today, in this time when equal access to quality digital resources feels more essential than ever, TeachingBooks.net and BookConnections.org (the public library interface) are helping to close this opportunity gap with our ever-growing library of 265,000+ materials. More than 55,000 schools and libraries have received more than 70 million unique investigations and searches since August 2020, personalizing readers' relationships to the authors and books they are reading.

TeachingBooks' mission is to equitably give all readers insights and opportunities that deepen their understanding and joy of children's and young adult books. With original author interviews, video book trailers, discussion questions, vocabulary lists, and even interactive games about books, TeachingBooks brings books to life for communities everywhere. Awarded by the American Association of School Librarians as a Best Digital App of 2020, TeachingBooks is based in Madison, Wisconsin USA. www.TeachingBooks.net and www.BookConnections.org