What is TEL?

TEL is the Tennessee Electronic Library - a collection of online databases available at no cost to all citizens of Tennessee through their public, academic, school (public and private) and non-profit special libraries. With TEL, 2,000 plus Tennessee libraries have free access to over a dozen databases, including over 6,000 magazines, journals, newspapers and other resources. Many of these are available in full text form.

Who can use TEL?

TEL is available to all Tennesseans, either through their library or home computer.

Who pays for TEL?

Available to eligible Tennessee libraries at no cost, TEL is administered by the Tennessee State Library and Archives, a division of the Tennessee Secretary of State's office. Currently, funds for TEL are made available under the Federal Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). Additional funding from the State of Tennessee will be needed in the future to continue TEL.

What is the value of TEL?

If TEL did not exist and every eligible library acquired the resources on their own, the cost to Tennessee's libraries would total more than 39 million dollars!

What is available on TEL?

What is the TEL Training Manual?

The Training Manual is a collection of lesson plans available free to K-12 librarians and teachers. These lesson plans are available online thanks to the TENN-SHARE (a consortium of Tennessee Libraries) and are available at their web site at http://www.tenn-share.org/tel.html


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