Brain Hive, a pay-as-you-go e-book lending service for K-12 school libraries, has added new features to the platform in addition to announcing changes to its management. Terri Soutor, former v-p of marketing and digital products at Lerner Publishing Group who has been instrumental to the formation of Brain Hive, has been named president. Scott Mader is also joining Brain Hive as its national sales director.

Originally launched in 2012 by the Lerner Universal Corporation, which also owns the Lerner Publishing Group, Brain Hive has added new features to its platform including “single sign-on” capability that allows easier management of user names and passwords. Students can now export citations for class research projects as well as export saved notes. The platform has also added a one-click dictionary that prefers age-appropriate definitions for any word in an e-book; school administrators can assign e-book settings and student profiles by grade level. And Brain Hive is also offering a concierge program in the fall to help teachers and administrators launch the program at their schools.

Brain Hive offers schools a turn-key platform for offering e-book lending. The service offers access to more than 5,000 titles (fiction and nonfiction) from 25 publishers, in addition to a variety of educational resources. The service has signed up nearly 800 schools serving more than 500,000 students.

“I am delighted to lead Brain Hive and to deliver the solutions schools need to transform the digital teaching and reading experience for children,” Soutor said. “We will continue investing in the technology, content, tools, and program support that schools need to take e-book reading in a whole new direction.”