From the each of us with the WSDLC, we want to congratulate all of you on another great school year– Congratulations! Thank you all SO much for everything you do to teach and assist Wisconsin students!
As noted last week, today’s message will be the final weekly message until August. You will continue to receive emails for important updates to the WSDLC as they come up, as well as monthly WSDLC-renewal reminders for schools/districts that haven’t let us know their decision yet (if you haven’t responded yet, don’t worry- there is still plenty of time). We will also send out another message akin to this in mid-June with general updates, usage stats, the Reach More Readers Challenge winners, and any other exciting happenings.

WSDLC Project Managers will be here all summer, so don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions, suggestions, or comments.

Have a wonderful summer, everyone!

Final Days: Reach More Readers Challenge!

We’re in the final stretch of the Reach More Readers Challenge, and we are so excited to see where the final numbers are going to land! We’ll announce the stats and the final winners later this summer.

What is the Reach More Readers Challenge?
The Reach More Readers Challenge is a friendly competition between all WSDLC Member districts/schools to encourage students to check out materials from Sora ahead of summer break.
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 isn’t a sign up to be a part of 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!

How Can I Get Students to Check Out Materials?
Getting students to access Sora and checkout titles is entirely up to you: use tried-and-true methods that have worked in your school/district in the past, or try out something new! Schedule classroom time if you can and give a brief demo and tour to you students; use Sora ebooks in story times; download Sora Coloring Pages from OverDrive and print them with access instructions on the back for your youngest students to take home and share with their grownups; add QR codes that link directly to popular titles or to curated collections to bulletin boards, fliers, or handouts; post Sora links to your social media page(s). It’s cliche to say, but still so true: the possibilities are endless!
You can find more information and links to pre-made marketing materials, gain ideas, and even download ready-made 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 Content Credit or some Sora swag by encouraging your students to participate in a friendly competition with other schools across the state!

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Updated MARC Records Available

The most recent set of WSDLC Shared Collection MARC records is now available to download as a ZIP file from the WSDLC website! You can find them on both the Collections Information and Circulation Policies page and on the MARC Records FAQ page.
You can download the MARC files for all three collections at once, or download each collection one-by-one. Each ZIP folder contains the MARC files for Ebooks, Audiobooks, and Magazines separately.

A few things to note:

• Sora Content Access Levels do not apply in online catalogs. This means if you upload MARC records for WSDLC content, your students will be able to search for every title in the collection (but they will not be able to check them out if the titles fall outside the students’ access level).The WSDLC recommends using Sora for searching directly and not uploading MARC records. Please contact the wsdlc-info@wils.org for assistance or questions.
• If your district has filtered specific consortium titles from view of your students, you will need to remove those titles from your catalog individually once imported. (More information on this process can be found below)

About WSDLC MARC Records
MARC record files, separated by the three Content Access Levels, are available for WSDLC Members to download quarterly. By making these files available for members quarterly, schools won’t need to spend as much time downloading MARC records from Marketplace and grappling with files from purchase orders that cannot be separated by content access levels. These quarterly updates will also catch any titles that have been updated to a new content access level after the initial purchase and will make sure your school’s catalog matches the access levels in Sora.

Follett Destiny Users: OverDrive Record-Removal
For those of you that use Destiny, attached to this email is a PDF from Follett that shows users how to permanently delete OverDrive records from the catalog. These instructions can be useful if you need to:

• remove OverDrive titles that have been weeded or expired from the shared collections,
• utilize Advantage Filtering and need to remove MARC records for your school’s filtered titles,

If you have any questions about this process, please reach out to your Follett representative.

If you have questions about the content access level settings for your school(s), please contact wsdlc@overdrive.com.
If you have questions about title visibility in your catalog, please contact your catalog vendor.

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Standing Reminder: Advantage Carts for Easier Ordering

Standing Reminder: Advantage Carts for Easier Ordering

Every few months, the WSDLC’s dedicated Digital Content Specialist Librarian at OverDrive, Beth Saxton, identifies themes of titles in the shared collection and prepackages them into bundles/carts (based on Content Access Levels) that WSDLC Members can purchase for only their students, just by completing a quick Google form! No thinking about how to best leverage your budget, and no logging in to OverDrive Marketplace. Just a simple, straightforward way to get your students the titles they want most.

When completing the order form(s) below, you’ll have the opportunity to specify if you’re purchasing 1-, 2-, or all 3 of the packages; and if you’d like your purchase(s) to be billed by invoice, issuing a PO, or by content credit that you already have deposited in your Advantage Account(s)– whatever works best for you!

Notes:
“High Demand” is determined as the audiobooks and ebooks that have the highest numbers of holds and checkouts within the shared collections.
These lists are not customizable for ordering. Please reach out to the OverDrive team at wsdlc@overdrive.com for additional options.

Reach out to the WSDLC Project Managers to get the order form links.
Save yourself time and money, and help get those high-interest, high-hold titles into the hands of your students faster by ordering today!

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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/.