Libraries
The libraries strive to be intellectual cornerstones of BFIS by linking our school community to an ever-wider circle of literature, knowledge, and information.
EC/ ES Digital Library
Library catalog, subscripcions, audiobooks, ebooks, and many other resources
MS/HS Digital Library
Library catalog, subscripcions, audiobooks, ebooks, and many other resources
To promote life-long learning in this age of globalization, the BFIS library provides support for the community by:
- Fostering a love of reading and literature
- Encouraging reading as an essential and fundamental habit
- Promoting independent learning and critical thinking
- Offering a collection of materials that support the curriculum
- Ensuring that students have access to information representing a wide variety of perspectives and viewpoints
- Collecting and providing information in a variety of formats
- Supporting our teachers’ instruction
- Providing students with the skills to search for, evaluate and use information effectively and independently
Library Resources
The school libraries have approximately 16,000 physical volumes, and the collection is balanced across each grade and reading level from Nursery through 12th grade.
We provide ebooks and audiobooks to the entire student body, as well as staff, via the Sora digital platform from Overdrive Media, which allows our users to self-manage their library checkouts and makes thousands of additional titles available to our students.
We maintain digital subscriptions to JSTOR, Britannica Online and Newsela, as well as a wide-ranging, multidisciplinary package of databases from Proquest, plus another database package from Infobase, which focuses specifically on supporting our History and Language & Literature programs. All of these database services provide students at all levels access to a vast amount of materials for research and study, and all are available to the entire school community. They may be accessed from home by students and parents alike
In addition to two daily print newspapers (The International NY Times and La Vanguardía), which include digital access to their archives, we subscribe to approximately twelve general-interest, print periodicals, which are available on the magazine racks in both of our libraries.
To support the development of proper research and citation skills, we have a subscription to Noodletools, which is available to all students.
Visiting authors and events
During the year, BFIS libraries host visiting authors for workshops, book presentations and read alouds. In addition to visiting authors events, the BFIS Libraries hosts several week-long book fairs, offering a wide selection of quality titles for purchase in both English and Spanish language.