Happy Tuesday! We have lots of exciting things to share this week, from reaching a new milestone in circulations; to sharing the recording of last week’s New Member Webinar; to highlighting a new topic of training materials.
September’s Usage Statistics (+ Over 3,000,000 Checkouts!)
The WSDLC’s 2022-23 membership year is off to another record-breaking start: September 2022 had a total of 131,180 checkouts! This is a 25% increase over September last year (2021 had 104,626 checkouts in September) and a 30% increase over September 2020 (which had 99,998 checkouts).
Not only that, but in September the WSDLC shared collections surpassed 3,000,000 checkouts! This exciting milestone was reached at 3:05pm on Tuesday, September 27th. The honor of the 3 millionth checkout belongs to (drumroll) Medieval Lego by Greyson Beights!
Other notable achievements this month include:
- 29,297 individual students logged in to Sora and checked out at least one title in September, which is the second-highest count any month has seen. (May 2022 had the highest count of students logging in and checking out a title, totaling 32,617.)
- The average waiting period for holds during the summer has historically been as long as 60 days, and this past summer was no different. However, now that students are back in school, the average waiting period has dropped back down to 12.1 days.
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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Back to School Webinar: Recording Available
Last week, the WSDLC’s OverDrive Account Team lead a very informative webinar that covered OverDrive Marketplace and Sora, and also showcased how to make the most of an Advantage Account, touching on custom curation, curricular use, new tools, and more!
This webinar was recorded, and you can view the recording here. (Password: ZB1u@^07)
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Flipped Classrooms: MARC Records Is Going On Now
The WSDLC offers a self-paced training series to help new members get oriented (and as a refresher for returning members) with their membership and the Sora collections. Every month, a different topic and set of materials are highlighted to help guide members throughout the school year. The content of these Flipped Classrooms is intended for Library Media Specialists and anyone else that may help to manage school/district library resources, OverDrive Advantage purchasing, and digital classroom materials. Materials are available for members to review independently, and OverDrive staff are ready to schedule one-on-one 20-minute sessions to answer members’ questions.
This month’s theme is MARC Records!
The MARC Records flipped classroom may be short but it is packed with helpful information for members. This lesson introduces members to the kinds of MARC records available through OverDrive and the WSDLC, and details how these records can be managed and uploaded into the Destiny catalog.
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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In Case You Missed It: MARC Records of the Shared Collection Now Available
Speaking of MARC records, last week we shared that MARC records for all titles in the shared collection will now be made available quarterly! The most recent set of MARC records are now available to download as a ZIP file from the WSDLC website. You can find them on the Collections Information and Circulation Policies page.
These quarterly MARC record files will be separated by Content Access Levels, and will be available for download from the WSDLC website. 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 (we’re looking at you automated RTL purchase orders). These quarterly updates will also catch any titles that have been updated to a new content access level after initial purchase, and will make sure your school’s catalog matches the access levels in Sora.
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Tiny Case Studies: Kindles in the Classroom
The WSDLC Training Series isn’t limited to only the Flipped Classrooms, oh no. Some months we also take an opportunity to share Tiny Case Studies that have been submitted from WSDLC Members! 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.
During October, we’re highlighting the Tiny Case Study Kindles in the Classroom, submitted by the WSDLC’s Board Member Beth Hennes!
Description: “When offered an eBook, my library users will often scoff and tell me that they “just prefer to hold the book” (which is pretty common and not unique across users). Yet when offered an e-reader, sometimes they warm up to eBooks because the experience is more like a page and less like a screen. However, many e-readers are designed for personal ownership, not just an app you can sign into, which makes them hard to use in a school setting with OverDrive.”
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 book club, 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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User Login Manager Cleanup
For our members that use User Login Manager, it’s cleanup time!
Over the next few weeks, please go through and make sure to add credentials for new students and remove those students who have left your school or district.
For more information on how to do this, please reach out to Amanda Lawman at aizuka-lawman@overdrive.com.
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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/.
