Rabbit Rabbit, and happy Tuesday everyone! February is here, and we are gearing up for another exciting month!
January’s Usage Statistics
With a new year, we have a new statistics sheet! The WSDLC collection is still following 2021’s trends: circulations have increased between December and January (in previous years circulation dipped in January), unique users increased in January, and the average waiting period is back to around 13 days (as opposed to the 24 days that winter breaks usually see).
Below is a chart showing the number of holds that were active on February 1st of each year since 2019. We’re still following the upward trend of more holds on ebooks, but this year we’ve seen a slight decrease on holds for audiobooks.
You can download the full calendar year’s statistics .xlsx spreadsheet, which includes detailed information on circulation numbers, holds, and other metrics, broken down by month, at the bottom of the WSDLC Year to Date Statistics page.
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Flipped Classroom: Managing Holds begins today!
February’s topic is freshly created, and focuses on managing holds, how to make the most of your Advantage purchases, and a look at some of the features and programs OverDrive and the WSDLC employ to get the books your students want in to their hands sooner. There is also an excellent marketing resource regarding holds created by one of our members!
Click this link to check out February’s Flipped Classroom: Managing Holds
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Member Idea Exchange: Responses
Last week we turned the tables and gave you, the members, the chance to share how you’ve been using statistics gleaned from OverDrive Marketplace Insights. We got a couple of fabulous responses, which we’re sharing with you here:
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Jen Peterson – I use the holds insights to know what I either need to purchase or purchase more of. I usually sort first to find out what books my students have on hold that we have zero copies of. I then also sort to find out what books have the most holds on them by students. I use just the trend report to report to the school board our trends in ebook checkout.
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Peg Billing (Lakeland Union High School) – I promote SORA by providing features of new books on our closed circuit TV’s in the building. And direct students to the e-Book page on the library website where I provide fun information on the e-Books stats overall from WSDLC with an embedded live stream of the daily stats. Here is the code to add it to your webpage.
Here is the code to embed this into your Google site:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<iframe width=”100%” height=”100%” src=”https://insights.overdrive.com/dashboards/9910366565f7400f86328f5fc47769d6″></iframe>
</body>
</html>
See it on my webpage at: https://sites.google.com/lakelandunion.org/lakelandunionhighschoollibrary/e-Books?authuser=0
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You can still view these responses, share more of your own methods, or ask questions on the “Statistics in the Sora Collection: How Do You Use Them?” Google Sheet.
To show how it’s never too late to add to the Member Idea Exchange documents, back in November, we asked you “What Methods Have You Used to Raise Awareness and Improve Engagement with Sora?“. Since that question, we’ve had some more additions., which, admittedly, we’ve missed sharing out; our deepest apologies! So without further ado, here are some additional ways schools around Wisconsin are marketing Sora to their students!
>Added a logo and direct link in Clever (where all our students go to access online resources)
>Made a short tutorial video for our parent newsletter highlighting the new magazines
Thank you so much to everyone who has added to these sheets!
And if these shared documents aren’t your style, you can always share what you’ve been doing or ask the entire WSDLC community any questions by sending your email to this listserv, wsdlc-members@wils.org!
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OverDrive’s School Stars Opens Next Week!
Schools Stars began in 2018, and is a global contest aimed to celebrate how schools promote Sora. This program will open on February 7th 2022, and runs through March 31st 2022. Past entries have included videos, visual displays and bulletin boards, social media campaigns, and student created resources.
If you’ve done any promotional work this school year (August 2021 – Time of entry), consider entering this contest! There are different categories to enter, and the prizes come in the form of content credit. From bulletin boards to videos; from to social media posts to classroom engagement; no accomplishment or action is too small to enter!
You can learn more about School Stars, and submit your entry, here!
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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/.
