Happy Tuesday!
As promised at the start of the year, we’re providing an overview of how 2022 fared in terms of the shared collections’ usage. (Hint: it’s phenomenal!) We are also sharing some details on the upcoming WEMTA Conference, a reminder on this month’s Flipped Classroom content, and some brief details on the upcoming Annual WSDLC Membership Survey that will be sent out next week.
Have a lovely week, everyone!

2022 Year in Review

The final numbers have been crunched, and we are SO EXCITED to share with you just how successful the WSDLC has been in 2022!

For the 2022 calendar year, the WSDLC collections had:

• 1,277,055 total checkouts.
  • 1,096,758 of those were ebooks,
  • 161,400 of those were audiobooks, and
  • the remaining 18,847 of those were magazines
• a total of 241 Wisconsin school districts (public and private) enrolled as WSDLC members.
  • Within these districts there are 935 schools, providing access to 326,573 students.
• 86,428 individual students checked out at least one title from the shared collections.
  • 45,216 titles and copies were purchased and added to the shared collections.
  • 33,349 of these were ebooks, and
  • 11,867 of there were audiobooks
• 3,211 of the purchased titles were completely new.
  • 2,803 new ebook titles were purchased in 2022, and
  • 365 new audiobook titles were purchased

As you can guess, all of these numbers blow 2021’s totals out of the water! We’ll share comparisons to years-past during the Annual Membership Meeting, coming up in May. (Planning for the annual meeting is well underway, and a date will be announced once it is set.)

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Join Us At the WEMTA Conference in Rothschild, WI on February 6th!

Please join the WSDLC, along with WiLS Cooperative Purchasing and Recollection Wisconsin, at the annual WEMTA conference, scheduled for Sunday February 5th – Tuesday February 7th in Rothschild, WI!
Stop by to say hi and chat with WiLS staff members in the exhibit hall on Monday at booth number 203, then slide on over to the booth next-door to talk to the WSDLC’s OverDrive Account Executive, Connie Bowman.

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Flipped Classrooms: Usage Statistics

January’s Flipped Classroom is Usage Statistics, where you will learn how to view your school’s and/or district’s usage statistics by utilizing Marketplace Insights. Insights is the area of your Marketplace account where you can run a variety of reports including, but certainly not limited to, the titles and formats that are getting checked out, what’s being purchased, how many holds are on titles, and how your students are interacting with Sora. You will also see how you can break down these reports to view usage at the consortium level, by only your school (Branch), or at the Advantage level.

Want to get ahead? Our next Flipped Classrooms topic begins in one week! In February, we’ll be focusing on Managing Holds, where you can look at how to make the most of your Advantage purchases, and a look at some of the features and programs OverDrive and the WSDLC employ to get the books your students want in to their hands sooner. There is also an excellent marketing resource regarding holds created by one of our members!

What are the WSDLC’s Flipped Classrooms?
The WSDLC offers a self-paced training series to help new members get oriented (and as a refresher for returning members) with their membership and the Sora collections. Every month, a different topic and set of materials are highlighted to help guide members throughout the school year. The content of these Flipped Classrooms is intended for Library Media Specialists and anyone else that may help to manage school/district library resources, OverDrive Advantage purchasing, and digital classroom materials. Materials are available for members to review independently, and OverDrive staff are ready to schedule one-on-one 20-minute sessions to answer members’ questions.
You can find more information on WSDLC Training opportunities and materials here: https://wsdlc.org/training/
Find the full calendar of self-paced training topics here: https://wsdlc.org/training/wsdlc-training-schedule/

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Watch Your Inboxes: The Annual Membership Survey Is Sending Soon

Every year, the WSDLC Project Managers send out a survey to all WSDLC members so that they can provide valuable feedback to the WSDLC Board, Project Managers, and OverDrive. The survey results will be used to help the WSDLC Board with the further development of the Consortium and the OverDrive service, and the results will be shared with the WSDLC membership at the Annual Membership Meeting in May.

Next week, we will be sending out the annual survey for all members to complete. This survey will ask which collections your school is accessing and your satisfaction with these collections, what you would like to see more/less of, how support from WSDLC project managers and OverDrive staff has been, your marketing strategies, and of course, your thoughts: what do you love, what is a pain point, and what kinds of updates would you like to see from Sora in the future.
The survey will be open from Monday January 30th until Friday February 24th.

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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/.