2024 Year in Review
WOW! Another record-breaking year in WSDLC usage is in the books! Many thank yous to all of you- the WSDLC members- for investing in and being a part of this resource that is reaching so many Wisconsin students.
Here are the final numbers on how usage of the WSDLC in January – December of 2024 turned out:
- 133,177 Students checked out at least one title
- That’s roughly 28.5% of all enrolled students- a 4% increase over 2023; and a 5% increase over 2022! (And, according to OverDrive, this is right on track with other K12 collections across the country.)
- 1,894,445 Total Checkouts
- 1,516,969 Ebooks were checked out
- 291,042 Audiobooks were checked out
- 86,434 Magazines were checked out
- 79% of all available titles circulated at least once
- Of the 51,006 titles that were available in 2024, 40,444 were checked out at least once
- 179,533 titles/copies were purchased for the shared collections
- 144,498 copies of Ebooks were purchased
- 35,035 copies of Audiobooks were purchased
What a year! Every one of these stats is a significant increase over 2023’s usage (which was significantly higher than 2022’s usage), and we can’t wait to see what the WSDLC will accomplish in 2025! We’ll share comparisons to years-past during the Annual Membership Meeting, happening in May.
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OverDrive’s School Stars is Back and Open for Submissions!
Has your school done some Sora-related marketing/promoting/sharing this school year that you’re proud of? Did you create a really cool-looking bulletin board or a social media post that got a lot of traction, or did your library host an event that included WSDLC’s digital materials and got students logging in to Sora? Whatever it is, share your idea with other Sora users worldwide!
OverDrive’s global contest, School Stars, celebrates the variety of ways schools promote Sora and opened for submissions on February 13th! There are FIVE different categories to enter:
- Best in Visual/Virtual Display or Bulletin Board
Share your best visual or virtual Sora display! This could be anything from a compelling Zoom background, a unique bulletin board, or a towering display case. - Best in Social Media
Share how you promoted Sora across your social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.) to engage your school community. - Best Community Engagement
Have you spread the word about Sora beyond the classroom? Share how you have achieved the buy-in of your community; whether it’s through partnering with the local library (Public Library CONNECT), encouraging parent/guardian engagement, increasing faculty and admin. support, etc., we want to hear about it! - Best use of Sora in the Classroom
Show us how you have integrated Sora into the classroom to support your learning objectives with lessons, activities, or assignments. - Best Student-Made Submission
Sora’s impact on your students fuels our work. Share how your students have shown their love for Sora and spread that love to their classmates. Maybe it was a fun video, presentation, or even a song! We welcome all mediums.
And this year, there will be 14 winners(!), taking in at least $100 in content credit!
If you’ve done any promotional work this school year (August 2024 – Time of entry), consider entering this contest! We say this often, but it always rings true: no accomplishment or action is too small to enter!
Learn more about School Stars here!
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Flipped Classroom: Managing Holds
February’s topic in the Flipped Classroom training series is Managing Holds. This month, learn more about the three best ways to manage holds, why it’s something you’d want to do, and read an overview on what the consortium does to manage holds.
And if nothing else, you should definitely pop into the Managing Holds Flipped Classroom to view (and share!) a quirky-and-fun short video a WSDLC Member created to share with her students to help encourage them to retrieve their digital holds. (Trust us- it’s fantastic!)
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: Five All-New Advantage Bundle Carts Available Now!
The WSDLC’s dedicated Digital Content Specialist, Beth Saxton, has created an all-new series of sets of titles for WSDLC members to easily purchase for their Advantage collections! No logging into Marketplace, and no trying to figure out how to get the most of your funds. Just a simple, straightforward way to reduce your students’ wait times on the titles they want most!
When you’re ready to purchase any of these packages, you can submit your order through their linked Google Form order forms. When completing the form(s), you’ll have the opportunity to specify in you’d like your purchase(s) to billed by invoice, issuing a PO, or by content credit that you already have deposited in your Advantage Account(s).
February’s Advantage Bundle Carts include:
- February 2025’s High-Demand Elementary Title Bundle
High-Demand Elementary – 27 titles for $502.17 - Youth Media Award Title Bundles
Newbury, Caldecott, Giesel, and Printz – 28 titles for $906.88
AAPL, Coretta Scott King, and Pura Belpre – 24 titles for $598.45 - Scholastic Metered Access Titles Bundles
Scholastic titles that are now being offered in MA:100 (100 checkouts, concurrent usage)!
Elementary – 29 titles for $498.92
Middle School – 21 titles for $406.08
High School – 21 titles for $437.58 - One Copy/One User Title Bundles
Enduring titles that stand the test of time, invest in them now and own them forever!
Elementary – 20 titles for $509.75
Middle School – 10 titles for $504.96
High School – 12 titles for $491.23 - Golden Archer Awards Title Bundles
Elementary – 13 titles for $308.68
Middle School – 10 titles for $330.60
High School -10 titles for $513.64
Please reach out to wsdlc-info@wils.org for the full title list(s) and/or order form(s).
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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Reminder: WSDLC Renewal/Pricing Timeline
We know that many schools are currently planning their 2025-26 budgets, so we’d like to take a brief moment to cover the WSDLC Renewal and Pricing process.
The WSDLC calculates pricing based on enrolled schools’ previous year’s certified enrollment numbers as reported to DPI and made available in WISEdash. For calculating 2025-26 costs, we will be using FTE counts from the 2024-25 academic year. This information is typically released by DPI in early March, which means WSDLC 2025-26 price quotes will be available in late-March 2025.
The cost for for the 2025-26 WSDLC membership year is $1.68 per enrolled student, based on schools’ 2024-25 FTE counts as reported to DPI.
As a reminder, in March 2023, the WSDLC Board approved keeping the cost per student steady for 2024-25, with a 2% increase for the following two membership years. The price was kept to $1.65 per student for the 2024-25 membership year; is increasing to $1.68 per student for 2025-26; and will increase to $1.72 per student for 2026-27.
Once DPI releases the certified enrollment data for the 2024-25 school year, we will be able to begin calculating the cost for each member district. All WSDLC 2025-26 renewal quotes will be sent out to each school/district’s WSDLC Main Contact(s) in late March 2025. The quotes will include a link to the renewal form, where members can indicate their intent to renew, as well as make contact changes and request updates to their district’s access (that is, add/remove access for schools/grades, adjust content access levels, etc).
To help you in your planning, as long as your enrolled schools haven’t seen a large change in enrollment between 2023-24 and 2024-25, and you aren’t planning to add/remove any grades/schools enrolled, you can calculate your estimated 2025-26 WSDLC Membership cost by taking your 2023-24 FTE of enrolled grades x $1.68.
If you have any questions about renewals, please reach out to the WSDLC Project Managers at wsdlc-info@wils.org.
Another small reminder: OverDrive Content Credit never expires.
With budgets on the mind, we also want to remind WSDLC Members that they could also consider purchasing OverDrive Content Credit with your Advantage Account! Content Credit never expires, and can be used when the timing works best for you to purchase additional titles that are popular with your students, new titles that the consortium hasn’t purchased [yet], or other titles that you would like to see available for your students.
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Reminder: Two Ways to Share Your WSDLC Experience(s)
The WSDLC is more than just a resource to enhance digital content offerings to Wisconsin students- it’s an opportunity for K12 library staff to connect, share ideas, and crowdsource best practices. And with that, WSDLC Project Managers have come up with two ways for WSDLC members to highlight and showcase some of the work they’ve done:
- A member spotlight- called the WSDLC Member Causerie– which is a brief interview with a WSDLC member library staffer; and
- The WSDLC’s Tiny Case Studies– which are brief, practical summaries of outstanding things that some WSDLC members are doing that involve Sora.
Be sure to check out both of these opportunities to share something about yourself and your district, and some major (or minor!) wins that your school has accomplished with the WSDLC!
WSDLC Member Causerie
The WSDLC Member Causerie is a brand new opportunity for staff at WSDLC member districts to share a little bit about themselves, their school, their discoveries and processes with Sora, and ways they’ve gotten their students, colleagues, parents, and/or other stakeholders engaged with their digital materials in Sora.
Fill out this form– completing as much, or as little, as you are comfortable- and be featured in an upcoming weekly newsletter!
Tiny Case Studies
WSDLC’s Tiny Case Studies are brief, practical summaries of outstanding things that some WSDLC members are doing that involve Sora and serve as an opportunity for members to share a WSDLC-related problem they had and how they solved it. We highlight these Tiny Case Studies during various Flipped Classroom months, but you can also view them all by clicking the following link or copy/pasting it into your browser: https://wsdlc.org/training/tiny-case-studies/.
If you’ve done something lately that you’d like to share with the WSDLC Community, let us know! Maybe you’ve put together some creative marketing, started a student reading bookclub, cleared a hurdle with getting students to team up for 2023’s Battle of the Books, engaged your school’s teachers on how they can utilize these resources in their classroom, or made a successful case for funding. No idea or accomplishment is too small!
You can submit your tiny case study idea by email at wsdlc-info@wils.org or complete the idea form, and we will reach out to you with the next steps!
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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/.
