Happy Tuesday! This week’s message is packed with announcements and opportunities from around the state that you don’t want to miss!
Register for the 2024 Annual WSDLC Membership Meeting
The Annual WSDLC Membership Meeting is a short three weeks away! Register today and receive a reminder the day-beforehand. Can’t make it? This meeting will be recorded and sent to all registrants.
Date: Tuesday, May 14th
Time: 3:45pm – 4:45pm
Registration: Reach out to wsdlc-info@wils.org for the registration link
Description: This year’s meeting will host three WSDLC Member speakers who will share how they’ve utilized their WSDLC Membership and engaged their students. Following these presentations, Sara and Rebecca will share a recap from 2023- including some really impressive usage stats- and provide a peek into the future of what is to come.
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In Case You Missed It: Multiple Collections of New Titles!
All Access Essential Children’s Library – Available Now!
Last week, the WSDLC Board and Selection Advisory Committee approved the addition of a new package of 800 simultaneous use ebooks from Bearport, Barefoot, and Jump publishers!
The subject areas are as follows:
- Graphic nonfiction (97) (Animal Escapes, Survival Stories, Heroes of 9/11 etc)
- Animals & nature (152) (Includes very low level PK-2)
- STEM focused titles (236) (Weather, Biomes, Careers, How it Works, Solar System etc.) more 3-5
- Beginning Readers (300) (Sports, more animals, community spaces, holidays, vehicles)
- Emotional Wellbeing (72) ( I Feel Angry, I am Respectful, Our Friend is Deaf )
In addition, curated collections have been created in Sora:
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New Comics & Magazines Coming Next Week (Friday, May 3rd)
OverDrive is adding even more titles to the All Access Comics and Sora Magazines collection packages that the WSDLC already subscribes to!
Beginning on Friday, May 3rd, 76 all new comics and 71 new magazines will become available to all WSDLC members!
Preview the All-Access Comics additions:
K-5 Collection
6-8 Collection
9-12 Collection
Preview the Sora Magazine additions:
K-5 Collection
6-8 Collection
9-12 Collection
And just like with every other title in the shared collections, if you find a title that doesn’t align with your school’s policies, you have the option to use the “Title Hide” feature in your Advantage Account. Title Hide allows you to remove consortium-owned titles for your school only: your students won’t be able to browse nor check out the title, while other WSDLC member districts will be unaffected and will continue to have access.
If you have any questions, please reach out to the WSDLC Project Managers at wsdlc-info@wils.org; and/or to the WSDLC team at OverDrive at wsdlc@overdrive.com.
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In the Community
Great Lakes, Great Read Announced!
The Wisconsin Water Library (WWL) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Wisconsin Library Association (WLA) have teamed up to launch a statewide program designed to inspire passion and connection to the Great Lakes Watershed through reading, called Great Lakes, Great Read.
From the WWL’s information page:
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Welcome to the “one book, one community” program designed to inspire passion and connection to the Great Lakes Watershed through reading. Whether you live near the Great Lakes or far away, their beauty, history, and significance are impossible to ignore. They’ve been home to 120 bands of Indigenous people, provided drinking water for millions, held flourishing biodiversity and 20% of the world’s surface freshwater and more. By diving into this project, you are deepening your connection to a system that shaped the U.S. and Canada, and continues to sculpt stories today.
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Great Lakes, Great Read officially kicked-off yesterday (April 22nd) with the announcement of the two titles (one for children and one for adults) that have been selected for 2024-25, and both are now available for checkout in Sora!
Children’s Title: “The Water Walker” by Joanne Robertson
“The Water Walker” is the story of a determined Ojibwe grandmother, a nokomis, named Josephine Mandamin who walks to raise awareness of the need to protect nibi (water). Robertson wrote and illustrated the book, which was published in 2017.
Adult’s Title: “The Best Part of Us” by Sally Cole-Misch
Sally Cole-Misch published the novel “The Best Part of Us” in 2021 and it explores a family’s ties to an inland lake in northern Ontario, just north of Lake Huron —and how those ties are tested both through natural processes and family dynamics.
You can learn more about Great Lakes, Great Read on their website at https://www.greatlakesgreatread.org.
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Nominate Yourself or a Colleague for the WiLS Board!
WiLS is still accepting nominations for a K-12 representative to serve on the WiLS Board through Friday (April 26th), and they’d love to have you on the team!
The WiLS Board provides diverse perspectives that help create and deliver awesome services that respond to WiLS member needs. Each seat’s three-year term will begin in July 2024. The Board meets five times per year in a mix of virtual and in-person meetings and may do some work via email between meetings. For more information, see the WiLS Board Member Expectations.
You can nominate yourself or a colleague (as long as you tell them!) by completing the nomination form.
Nominations will close at the end of the day on April 26th and the election will begin in early May.
Questions? Let WiLS know at information@wils.org.
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One Week Left: Flipped Classrooms: Marketing!
April is our final month of the WSDLC’s Flipped Classroom training program, and it focuses on Marketing and Training! We know this is a hot topic for many of you, and we hope that the ideas and resources we’ve pulled together here can work as a jumping point to implement your own marketing strategies. Included are:
Lists of marketing techniques and actions from other WSDLC members and from the OverDrive team;
Links to the OverDrive blog’s school library marketing spotlight and previous School Stars winners;
Downloadable/Printable flyers, bookmarks, social media images, a coloring page, and so much more that are free to use; and
Training Modules from OverDrive that you can send to your students and teachers!
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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Reminder: WSDLC’s Reach More Readers Challenge Begins Soon!
The Reach More Readers Challenge will be starting on May 1st!
What is the Reach More Readers Challenge?
Two years ago, the WSDLC and OverDrive began hosting a competition between all WSDLC member schools to encourage students to check out a title in Sora during the month of May, increasing their awareness of this resource before summer break begins. This challenge has been a huge hit- there was a 19% increase in usage in 2022, and a 12% in usage in 2023- so we’re running this challenge again this year!
The schools/districts that see the greatest increase in individual students checking out a title have the opportunity to win content credit (the never-expiring deposit of money that can be used to purchase additional title for only your students) or even some sweet Sora swag!
How Can My School/District Participate?
There’s nothing anyone needs to do to participate in 2024’s Reach More Readers Challenge: Every school that joined the WSDLC before March 1st, 2024 is automatically entered into this competition!
What you do need to do is spread the word to your students to have them log in to Sora and check out [at least] one title!
We’ll be comparing the number of individual students that checked out titles in March 2024 to the number in May 2024: The school district(s) that have seen the greatest increase in the number of students checking out materials in Sora between these two months will be declared the winner, and score some fabulous prizes!
WSDLC Project Managers will be sharing resources over the next couple of weeks for schools to utilize to help market the collections to students. If there is anything in particular that you would like to see, or if you have any resources that you’d like to share with the whole WSDLC community, let us know at wsdlc-info@wils.org, or share on this listserv!
You can find more information and links to marketing materials, ideas, and QR Codes for curated collections on the WSDLC website.
So get ahead of the summer slide, increase awareness of the WSDLC collections, and maybe even score some Sora swag by encouraging your students to participate in a friendly competition with other schools across the state!
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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/.
