Happy Tuesday! It’s hard to believe that it’s already been a month since our last message. We hope you all have been having a peaceful and rejuvenating summer, with plenty of fun and relaxation. This week’s month’s news includes lots of the things you would expect: Updates and announcements for the consortium; a New titles list; OverDrive usage stats from last month; a brief look at the consortium’s school year stats; the winners of the Reach More Readers Challenge; and more.
We’ll send out additional announcements if/when there are any significant updates; otherwise, this will do it for us for the summer! We’ll start up the weekly message again in late July/early August as everyone starts heading back in to the classroom.
Take care everyone!
2021-22 School Year in Review
During the Annual Membership Meeting held this past May, we shared the exciting growth that the WSDLC has seen throughout 2021. Now that another school year has come and gone, we’re sharing a brief overview of some of the final numbers for the consortium from the 2021-22 school year (September 1 – May 31).
- During the 2021-22 school year, from the 230 school districts that are WSDLC members, nearly 70,000 individual students checked out a title from Sora.
- The total number of checkouts during the school year reached an astounding 1,117,622!
- Towards the end of October 2021, the WSDLC added a new Magazines collection, which in the seven short months that it was live, saw almost 16,000 checkouts.
- The shared collections added over 33,000 additional copies of titles (in particular, popular titles with lots of holds and Battle of the Books titles) and over 4,000 completely new titles.
We are so excited to see what the final numbers from 2022 will look like! (We know they are going to be impressive!)
Reach More Readers Challenge Winners!
In April, we announced the Reach More Readers Challenge: a contest between all WSDLC member schools (enrolled prior to March 2022) that compared the number of students at each school that checked out at least one title from Sora in March 2022 and in May 2022. The schools that saw the most significant percent increase between these two months would be declared the winners.
Our hope for this challenge was that it would help [re]introduce students to the Sora reading app before they leave school for the summer, and we are SO EXCITED to share the results!
First, a large-picture look: In March 2022, 27,333 individual users logged in to Sora and checked out a title. In May 2022, this number increased to 32,617 unique users. That’s a difference of 5,284 more students checking out titles, and a 19% increase, across the consortium! Hot dang!
After tallying and comparing the unique users from each school, we are ready to announce that the schools that saw the largest increase in use are:
Grand Prize Winner: Hartford Joint School District #1 — 4,700% increase
First Runner Up: Sun Prairie Area School District – Madison Elementary School — 4,400% increase
Second Runner Up: Crivitz Elementary School — 4,100% increase
Third Runner Up: Sun Prairie Area School District – McDill Elementary School — 2,900% increase
Congratulations to all of the winners!
We’d also like to give a HUGE thank you to OverDrive for sponsoring this contest and donating prizes, with a special shoutout to Lena Richardson, our OverDrive Account Manager, who did the heavy lifting of calculating and comparing the percent increase for each school, contacting the winners, and coordinating the prize distribution! Thank you!
And for those of you that are like us and enjoy seeing historical data, here is how the numbers of students checking out titles in Sora changed between March and May since 2019:
March to May of 2019 saw an increase of 2,058 unique users, a 30% increase. March to May of 2020 saw a decrease of 2,824 unique users, a 23% decrease. March to May of 2021 saw an increase of 2,554 unique users, an increase of 11%.
May’s Usage Statistics
If you’ve already read the Reach More Readers Challenge results above, it should be no surprise that May saw a massive surge in usage! There were 163,308 checkouts (compared to 128,867 checkouts in May 2021), with over 32,000 students checking out titles. Despite the higher use last month, the number of holds on titles increased significantly less than in previous months– The number of holds between March and April increased by 50,017, but only increased by 4,408 between April and May.
*The historical number of holds are the cumulative number of holds since the WSDLC began through the
end of the indicated month. These are not the number of holds that were on titles for each month.
You can download the full calendar year’s statistics .xlsx spreadsheet, which includes detailed information on circulation numbers, holds, and other metrics, broken down by month, at the bottom of the WSDLC Year to Date Statistics page.
New Titles Added in May & June (+ A New Collection of Titles Coming in July)
In May and June, 359 completely new titles were added to the shared collection! Twenty of these new titles added were Audiobooks, 4 were Comics and Manga, 2 were Magazines (>Booklist, published by the ALA; and the Spanish language magazine ¡HOLA! Niños), and 331 Ebooks (which includes 164 Comics and Graphic Books).
A complete list of all new titles added in May and June 2022, along with their format and content access level(s), can be WSDLC New TItles in May and June 2022.
And speaking of new titles being added…
New OverDrive Collection Coming in July: Social and Emotional Learning
As part of OverDrive’s Everyone Reads programs, a collection of over 50 Social and Emotional Learning titles will be added to the shared collection in July. This bundle, which will replace the current Social and Emotional Learning Collection, includes ebooks and audiobooks with unlimited access through June 30, 2023. These titles are a great way to support student learning and staff professional development needs.
Click here to log in to Marketplace and view the complete title list*.
Updates, Announcements, & Reminders
➢ 2022-23 WSDLC Membership Renewals
Quotes for schools and districts to renew their WSDLC Membership for the 2022-23 school year have been sent out to everyone listed as their school’s WSDLC Main Contact. If you haven’t received yours, please let us know.
If your school/district is still deciding on renewals for the upcoming school year, waiting on POs, and/or deciding on tweaks to make to your membership, that’s all great! We ask that everyone let us know their plans for renewing before August 15. Members that haven’t responded to the renewal form (linked in the email that contains the renewal quote) will be automatically renewed on September 1.
Invoices for the 2022-23 membership will be sent out in September unless you have requested a different invoicing date. Invoices will be sent from WiLS, and will be paid to WiLS.
Please let us know if you have any questions about renewals and invoicing!
➢ CAL Audit
Over the next few weeks, we will be working with the WSDLC’s OverDrive Content Specialist Beth Saxton to run a Content Access Level (CAL) audit of the collections. This audit is performed annually to ensure all titles in the shared WSDLC collections are placed in the Juvenile, Young Adult, or Adult collection according to professional review sources (such as School Library Journal, Kirkus, and CCBC Choices) and following the WSDLC Collection Development Policy. Of particular focus of the CAL audit is YA materials that should be moved to the Adult collection, but the entire collection will be assessed.
➢ WSDLC Project Managers Meeting with OverDrive’s President and Chief Executive Officer
During the Annual Membership Meeting in May, we announced an upcoming meeting with Steve Potash, the President and Chief Executive Officer of OverDrive. This meeting occurred earlier this month and was very productive! We were able to discuss the WSDLC’s wants and needs for a successful library consortium for the Wisconsin school community. During this meeting, Steve listened closely and helped brainstorm ideas that OverDrive could implement into Sora to help relieve some of the pressures many WDSLC members and future members face. In particular, we discussed the top asks from the WSDLC community: More Content Access Levels and a change to the collection labels (referring to Juvenile, Young Adult, and Adult). The WSDLC is not the only consortium that would like to see changes in these areas, and we were delighted to hear that OverDrive has recently put together a series of workgroups to explore and tackle these projects. Both projects are still in [very] early development, so while no timelines have been given, we have been reassured that they are both top-priority projects.
➢ Classic OverDrive website will be discontinued December 1, 2022
OverDrive has recently announced that on December 1, 2022, the classic OverDrive website will be discontinued to focus on the award-winning Sora student reading app. As part of this effort, OverDrive is actively converting PDF content into the OverDrive Read format as fixed-layout titles, making them available in Sora for the first time. Efforts are ongoing, with a goal of offering most PDF titles available in OverDrive Read by December 2022.
The majority of WSDLC checkouts are happening in Sora already, but we wanted to make sure all WSDLC members get this message now, just in case you know of any students using the classic OverDrive website to access materials.
➢ Available Now: Annual MARC Records Files
Each year, WSDLC Project Managers receive a file of MARC records for all titles available in the collection, broken down by Juvenile, YA, and Adult.
This file has been posted to the WSDLC website and can be found here: https://wsdlc.org/for-members/collection-information/
➢ In Case You Missed It
Earlier this month, Lena at OverDrive sent out these reminders and resources that are just too good for you to miss!
Audiobook Sale – 25-50% off sale titles!
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- Thousands of titles are on sale, making now the perfect time to grow your audiobook collection
- Get started browsing here: AUDIOBOOK SALE
- The sale lasts through the end of June
End of Year Checklist:
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- Let Amanda know if anything with your authentication is changing for next year: email Amanda
- Promote Sora over the summer: promotional resources
- Fill holds so students aren’t waiting for books over the summer: how to fill holds
- Refresh your collection for the summer: request help from Beth
- Poke around the Sora activity page to check out your reading stats for the year: about Sora activity page
- Delete carts you won’t be ordering: how to delete a cart
- Send me dates to schedule fall training for you/your staff: book a time with me
Learning Opportunities:
Friendly Reminder: Have extra library budget you’re not sure what to do with? Do you need to use it or lose it? Consider using those funds on ebooks and audiobooks your students will love and have easy access to over summer break! Reach out to me or Beth and we can help you get started.
The WSDLC project managers and the team at OverDrive are always available if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions.
Not sure who to contact? Check out this handy guide on the WSDLC website: https://wsdlc.org/who-to-contact-with-questions/.
