Happy Tuesday!
In this week’s message, we’re sharing:
- The 2026 WSDLC Membership (Mini!) Survey
- WSDLC Membership Renewals Information + Timeline
- February’s Usage Statistics
- New Titles Added in February
- Reminder on the current Advantage Bundle Carts: Youth Media Awards Titles
- March’s Self-Paced Training Topic Materials: Curation
As always, the WSDLC project managers (wsdlc-info@wils.org) and the WSDLC team at OverDrive (wsdlc@overdrive.com) are always available if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions.
Have a great week!
Complete the 2026 WSDLC Membership ✨MINI ✨ Survey
The WSDLC’s Annual Membership Survey is open for your feedback!
Every year, the WSDLC Project Managers, Board, and OverDrive Team work together to prepare a survey for members to share what they appreciate the most with their WSDLC Membership, and what could use some tweaking to make membership in the consortium even stronger.
For 2026, we’ve trimmed down the questions to get at the heart of what makes a great shared collection and can inform direct actions and change for the consortium:
- where WSDLC schools are finding value in their membership- and where they aren’t,
- the training opportunities and platform features most important for Wisconsin school library staff, and
- how the Project Managers can help streamline processes.
The 2026 WSDLC Member Mini Survey should take only around 5 minutes of your time to complete. Please reach out to the WSDLC Project Managers at wsdlc-info@wils.org for the survey link.
Your responses will help the WSDLC Board, Project Managers, and the Sora/OverDrive Team further develop the Consortium and the OverDrive service.
Your response by Friday, March 13th, 2026 will be greatly appreciated.
The results from this survey will be shared at the Annual Membership Meeting in May.
Thank you very much for your time and thoughts!
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Reminder: WSDLC Membership Renewals + Timeline
Many schools are currently planning their 2026-27 budgets, so we’d like to take another 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 2026-27 costs, we will be using FTE counts from the 2025-26 academic year. This information is typically released by DPI in early/mid March, meaning WSDLC 2026-27 price quotes will be available by late-March 2026.
In general, WSDLC Members can expect the timeline to be:
- Early- to- Mid- March: DPI releases the certified enrollment data for 2025-26 school year.
- Mid- to- Late- March: Within one week of Certified Enrollment Data being released, WSDLC Project Managers calculate pricing for all 320+ WSDLC member districts.
- Mid- to- Late- March: Once all pricing is calculated, 2026-27 WSDLC Membership renewal quotes will be sent out to each school/district’s WSDLC Main Contact(s).
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).
WSDLC Members who are also WiLS Cooperative Purchasing Members will be able to review and approve their WSDLC Membership within the MyWiLS portal. Updates to their access will need to be communicated prior to approvals in MyWiLS. - End of March: All WSDLC Main Contacts will have received their 2026-27 WSDLC Membership renewal price quote, along with instructions for renewal.
Renewal Pricing & Planning
The cost for for the 2026-27 WSDLC membership year is $1.68 per enrolled student, based on schools’ 2025-26 FTE counts as reported to DPI.
In March 2023, the WSDLC Board approved a planned 2% increase in the per-student membership fee for the 2025–26 and 2026–27 membership years. Following a careful review of the WSDLC budget, the Board unanimously voted at their January 20th meeting to hold the membership fee flat for the 2026–27 year, maintaining the rate at $1.68 per student.
The Board also approved a 1% increase in the per-student membership fee for each of the following two years: $1.70 per student for 2027–28; and $1.72 per student for 2028–29.
To help keep membership fees low while continuing to grow the WSDLC’s shared collection budget, the administration and project management fee was reduced from $0.25 per student to $0.20 per student.
To help you in your planning, as long as your enrolled schools haven’t seen a large change in enrollment between 2024-25 and 2025-26, and you aren’t planning to add/remove any grades/schools enrolled, your estimated 2026-27 WSDLC Membership cost will be roughly the same as your 2025-26 WSDLC Membership cost.
If you have any questions about renewals, please reach out to the WSDLC Project Managers at wsdlc-info@wils.org.
Learn more on the Renewing Your WSDLC Membership page on the WSDLC website.
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February’s Usage Statistics
Looking at February’s Sora usage across the consortium:
- 36,099 Audiobooks were checked out,
- 204,508 Ebooks were checked out, and
- 10,926 Magazines were checked out,
all adding up to a monthly total of 251,533 titles read, by 48,769 individual students across the state.
On top of that, while the number of holds on titles has risen (there were 108,310 holds on February 2nd, and 121,944 holds one month later on March 2nd), the Average Waiting Period has dropped to an impressive 17 days (from 21 days on February 2nd).
View the full calendar year’s consortium statistics as a Google Sheet here.
Download historical stats from the bottom of the WSDLC Year to Date Statistics page.
Learn how to run usage stats for only your district/school:
- WSDLC’s newly updated Training Resources page | Reports section,
- WSDLC’s Flipped Classroom: Usage Statistics,
- OverDrive Resource Center’s training videos,
- OverDrive’s self-paced View Sora Activity training module
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New Titles Added in February
Last month, 168 completely new titles were added into the shared collection!
- 40 Audiobooks: 11 Lower Elementary; 13 Upper Elementary; 8 Middle School, and 8 Lower High School
- 128 Ebooks: 46 Lower Elementary; 26 Upper Elementary; 36 Middle School; 18 Lower High School; and 2 Upper High School
Of these new titles, there are:
- 54 that are in a language other than English: 53 in Spanish; Castilian, and 1 in German
- 41 subject areas, the top five being: Juvenile Fiction (88), Juvenile Literature (79), Young Adult Fiction (49), Comic and Graphic Books (31), and Young Adult Literature (29)
- 8 lending models: 70 OC/OU, 41 MA (12mo/OU), 23 MA (24mo/OU), 19 MA (26 checkouts/OU), 10 MA (25checkouts or 24mo/OU), 3 MA (52 checkouts or 24mo/OU), 2 Subscription, and 1 MA (100 checkouts/CU)
*Learn more about OverDrive’s Lending Models with the WSDLC’s newly updated Training Resources page | Purchasing section
View the full title list (with format and CAL) as a Google Sheet here.
(This Google Sheet also includes the new titles added each month, so if you ever miss a month, we’ve got you covered!)
You can find more information, including the Collection Development policy and a Statement on the WSDLC Collections, on the Collection Information and Circulation Policies page on the WSDLC website.
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All New WSDLC-Exclusive Advantage Bundle Carts: Youth Media Awards Titles
Exclusive for WSDLC Member schools, four brand new Advantage Bundle Carts have been curated and are available for purchase! And for February 2026, The WSDLC’s Digital Content Specialist, Beth Saxton, has once again built carts around this year’s Youth Media Award winning titles.
February 2026’s Youth Media Awards Titles Bundles
Newbury, Caldecott, and Printz Titles | 16 titles | $513.07
Best of Youth Media Awards – Elementary School Titles | 22 titles | $500.07
Best of Youth Media Awards – Middle School Titles | 15 titles | $506.04
Best of Youth Media Awards – High School Titles | 16 titles | $503.32
WSDLC February 2026 Youth Media Awards Titles Order Form: Reach out to the WSDLC Project Managers at wsdlc-info@wils.org
*Note: These lists are not customizable for ordering. Please reach out to the OverDrive team at wsdlc@overdrive.com for additional options.
When you’re ready to purchase any of these packages, you can submit your order through the linked Google Form order form.
When completing the form, 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).
If you have any questions on purchasing, please reach out to the OverDrive team at wsdlc@overdrive.com.
What are Advantage Bundle Carts?
Every few months, the WSDLC’s dedicated Digital Content Specialist Librarian at OverDrive, Beth Saxton, identifies collections of titles and prepackages them into sets 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, no going through reports and lists to identify certain titles, and no logging in to OverDrive Marketplace. Just a simple, straightforward way to reduce your students’ wait times on the titles they want most. If building up your school’s Advantage offerings in Sora is something that always gets set aside for another time, Advantage Bundle Carts are here was a way to make things at least a little bit easier for WSDLC members.
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March’s Self-Paced Training Topic Materials: Curation
March’s self-paced training topic is Curation!
Monthly training topics are intended for WSDLC members who are new to the WSDLC, as well as those who might be in need of reminders on a certain topic, might by looking for inspiration, or just want to see if there’s anything new.
- Flipped Classrooms: Curation – This month, learn all about Curation in OverDrive/Sora and how you can create and post your very own curated collections to support your students’ needs and interests. Or take full advantage of being a part of a consortium, and turn Curation off so your students can view the consortium’s monthly-updated curations, put together by the WSDLC OverDrive team.
- Advantage Best Practices: Curation (PDF Attached) – 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! (This was shared earlier this membership year, but it’s definitely worth sharing again.)
- Curation | WSDLC Training Resources page – Information and links to how- and why- you can run a current holds report via your OverDrive Marketplace account.
- WSDLC’s Curation FAQ page – Another informational page with resources for curation.
- OverDrive’s Resource Center – A collection of ready-to-use outreach materials that schools can download and use immediately, from OverDrive.
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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/.
