Hello WSDLC members!

This week, we are most excited to share two updates to the shared collections: First, the WSDLC will be participating in this year’s Sora Reads. Second, the WSDLC was able to put funds towards a pilot of purchasing in the CPC model, starting with some Battle of the Books titles. Find more information on both of these below!

We’re also sharing some training materials focusing on Advantage Accounts, which includes the new “Advantage Best Practices: Holds and Metered Access Managers” PDF (attached to this email). We also have a few reminders: the best contacts for when you have questions related to the WSDLC and Sora; for User Login Manager members, it’s time for cleanup; and a listing of the recent updates to Sora and Marketplace. And rounding off this message, the Project Managers have compiled this quarter’s MARC Records for those who like to upload them into their catalogs (which, we’ll add, is not a recommended process).

• Advantage Best Practices: Holds and Metered Access Managers (PDF) – A step-by-step walkthrough on what these tools are, how you can set them up, and how to make them work for you; put together by the WSDLC’s Sora/OverDrive Digital Content Library Beth Saxton!
• Flipped Classrooms: Advantage Accounts & Marketplace – This flipped classroom introduces the Advantage program and walks users through how to use Marketplace to make the most of their Advantage accounts. Learn about Lending Models, adjusting the Content Access Level for your Advantage titles, make the most out of Class Sets, and so much more!
• Tiny Case Studies: Kindles in the Classroom – 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. This TCS comes from Beth Hennes (now at Madison Metro SD, a WSDLC Board Member, and this year’s Board Chair), and showcases the value of offering ereaders to students.

Battle of the Books Titles Available With No Wait Times!

The WSDLC in coordination with OverDrive is pleased to announce a pilot program that will make many of this year’s Middle and High School Battle of the Books titles available to students and staff for the month of November with no holds. The Cost Per Circ (CPC) program will begin November 1st and remain active until November 30th. The program will feature 18 titles on the Middle School list and 20 titles from the High School list. Both ebook and audiobook formats will be included as available from publishers. The WSDLC is allocating $20K toward this pilot and titles will remain available as funding allows until November 30th.

Checkout limits will allow 2 ebooks and 1 audiobook title per student at one time.

If you have questions, please reach out to the WSDLC Project Managers at wsdlc-info@wils.org.

New MARC Record Files Available

For those schools that choose to display WSDLC-holdings in their online catalogs, 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 five 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. Meaning if you upload MARC records for WSDLC shared collection content, your students will be able to search for every title in the collection (but they still will not be able to check titles out if they fall outside their assigned content 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 (Advantage Filtering), you will need to remove those titles from your catalog individually once imported.

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In Case You Missed It: Updates in Sora & Marketplace

• Reading Goals: Students can now set daily reading targets, track progress, and earn milestone badges that encourage consistent reading.
• Reading Challenges: Educators and students can create and join friendly competitions with live leaderboards and custom badges.
• Hold efficiency improvements: The language used for suspending holds in Sora has changed from “Freeze” to “Pause” and “Resume.” Additionally, selecting the Get it later button on a hold notification pauses the hold until the user resumes or cancels it. If no action is taken, the hold will auto-cancel after 365 days.
• Accessibility enhancements: Title details pages now show downloadable EPUBs and publisher-provided accessibility statements (when available).

• CPC and Class Set availability and pricing now appear alongside other content in the main Shop section.
• You can include or exclude CPC and Class Sets in advanced search and shopping filters.
• You can assign content access levels while adding CPC titles that aren’t in your collection in other lending models.
• You can remove a title from a cart while shopping by selecting Remove from the Pending in cart pop-up.

• A new onboarding flow helps first-time users enable the dashboard and set up classes.
• A leaderboard highlights top students by reading time and displays other engagement stats.
• A new Activity by Class section compares reading metrics across classes.
• The landing page includes four new charts: time read, books opened, reading sessions, and active users.
• Charts and class data can now be exported as a PDF.

• The current average wait period formula in the Current holds report has been updated to better reflect users’ actual wait times.
  Here are the changes to the formula:
  • It defines “active users” as those who’ve checked out or placed a hold in the last 90 days, instead of only considering checkouts in that timeframe.
  • It uses the date a hold was most recently resumed, instead of the original hold date, when looking at formerly paused holds.
  • It excludes holds on weeded titles.
  • It uses a preorder’s street date, instead of the original hold date, when factoring in preorders that have reached their street date.

• A new advanced search filter lets you include or exclude titles already in a cart for easier selection and comparison.
• A new Updates section highlights recent product changes. An icon will appear when new updates are available.
• Publisher-provided accessibility statements now appear on title pages (when available).