Happy Tuesday! This week’s message includes details on upcoming forum events, the WSDLC’s Flipped Classroom series, and a heads up on the upcoming WSDLC Membership survey.
Have a lovely week ahead, everyone!
In the Community: Today! WEMTA Intellectual Freedom Forum
Join WEMTA for the January 2024 edition of the Intellectual Freedom Forum, which will be held this evening, Tuesday, January 23rd at 5PM. The Intellectual Freedom Forum will last for 45 minutes and is free to all WEMTA members. Members must register for the event ahead of time.
View more information and register for this event here!
Not a WEMTA member? It’s free if you want to participate in certain events. Learn more about membership here.
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Flipped Classrooms: Usage Statistics
With a new month comes a new Flipped Classroom! 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? 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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In the Community: Navigating Challenges: What Districts Need to Know Webinar Hosted by Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Library Services Team and the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC)
On Thursday, February 1st from Noon to 1:00pm, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Library Services Team and the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) is hosting a webinar covering challenges to materials in school library collections, and we want to make sure no one misses this opportunity.
Date: Thursday, February 1st
Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm
Description: School districts are facing an unprecedented number of complaints about and challenges to materials in school library collections. This hour-long webinar for Wisconsin school district administrators, library media specialists, and other interested school district personnel will provide a brief overview of guiding legislation, key professional and legal principles, and essential school district policies and procedures related to curating library media collections and responding to concerns and challenges. This overview will be followed by an extended question-and-answer session, with registered attendees invited to submit questions prior to the event.
Presenters:
- Monica Treptow, School Library Media Consultant, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction
- Megan Schliesman, Assistant Director, Cooperative Children’s Book Center, School of Education, UW-Madison
- Tessa Michaelson Schmidt, Director, Cooperative Children’s Book Center, School of Education, UW-Madison
Registration: https://bit.ly/3STzZV2 (Registration closes on January 25th, 2024)
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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, 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.
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