We will update this post with more info as it becomes available.

From an Email by Roberto J. Rodríguez: Deputy Assistant to the President for Education (via DPLA):

Through greater access to America’s libraries and information resources, you make a difference each day in the education and lifelong learning of youth and adults in your community.

This Thursday, April 30, President Obama will visit the Anacostia Neighborhood Library in Washington, D.C., where he will highlight the importance of books and lifelong reading, and the value and impact of America’s public libraries.

As part of his ConnectED Initiative, President Obama will also announce a new partnership with America’s libraries, publishers and non-profit organizations to expand access to digital books and library resources for America’s children.

We invite you to bring members of your community together to view this event and to celebrate and support the role of America’s libraries in the learning of our children and youth.

To view this event broadcast live at 10:50 a.m. on Thursday, please visit WhiteHouse.gov/live.

And be sure to learn more tomorrow about the ConnectED Library Challenge by visiting WhiteHouse.gov.

What Will the President Announce? (via Reuters):

President Barack Obama will go to a public library in one of Washington’s poorest neighborhoods on Thursday to talk about a plan to give low-income children access to 10,000 e-books.

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The plan includes $250 million in e-book commitments from publishers, including from the five major publishing houses: Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH’s Macmillan, CBS Corp’s Simon & Schuster Inc, Penguin Random House, Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group Inc, and News Corp’s HarperCollins Publishers LLC.

The New York Public Library is developing an app to connect low-income kids with the books, and Obama will urge more communities to find ways to get kids into libraries.

Read the Complete Article

Btw, it’s worth noting recent reports by the Washington Post about the lack of school library materials in many DC Public Schools (including in the Anacostia neighborhood where Obama will appear).

See: District of Columbia: “Unequal Shelves in D.C. School Libraries Benefit Wealthier Students (March 9,2015)

The program will be part of the ConnectedED initiative.

UPDATE 1:  White House Unveils New ConnectED Effort Focused on Library Access, Content (via edWeek)

At an appearance at the Anacostia Library in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, the president is expected to put forward a plan, supported by commercial publishers, to provide more than $250 million worth of free e-book content to students from low-income families, along with a second effort meant to give all students in 30 different communities, and eventually nationwide, a library card.

UPDATE 2: The library card for every student idea is an excellent one. With that in mind, here’s a post from one year ago about a partnership involving the Free Library of Philadelphia. The project merged the library’s cardholder database with a database of enrolled students in Philadelphia public schools. 98,000 of the districts 136,000 students did not have cards. Now they do. Of course, it’s one thing to have a card and another thing to use it.