Happy Tuesday Monday! With a well-deserved break for all of you just days away, we’re sending out this week’s message a day early.
We also want to take this moment to say that everyone here at the WSDLC are so thankful for each and every one of you, and we are so grateful for all of the amazing work you are doing at your schools and for your students.
We wish you all a peaceful break. ♥
In Case You Missed It: Updates & Resources From OverDrive
Last week, the WSDLC’s Account Manager, Lena Richardson, sent out a message packed with helpful information! We’re including that messaging here again, just so no one misses it:
With the holidays and school breaks coming up, this will be our last big update to you for the year. As always, feel free to reach out to us with questions, ideas, and suggestions.
OverDrive End of Year Sale starts Monday, November 14th
Don’t miss out on one of the year’s biggest sales! It’s an especially good time to stock up on audiobooks and nonfiction titles to round out your collection. Explore here in Marketplace during the sale to find our best sale titles. Don’t have time to shop? Let us help you:
We have readily available carts of the top picks – let us know which ones you’d like added to your collection:
- Juvenile cart $250 or $500
- Young Adult cart $250 or $500
- Adult cart $250 or $500
- Audiobook only – Juvenile or Young Adult cart $500
- Shop your holds on sale
- Customized requests are always welcome – reach out to Beth with requests
Magazines and Comics are available in Sora
Expand your collection and draw in reluctant readers with magazines and comics! Reach out to Lena for more information on pricing!
- Simultaneous Use = Always available to check out!
- The magazine package includes 75+ titles. Unlimited checkouts of classroom friendly titles like The Week Jr. and National Geographic plus high interest favorites like Minecraft World and PC Gamer
- The full comics package includes nearly 2000 titles, but you can choose just one age group to fill demand and reduce content concerns
- Content Access Levels are set by our OverDrive Librarians but can be changed to suit your community and titles can be weeded at your discretion
- Note: if you purchased these packages last year, you will be notified when it is time to renew your subscription
- Elementary comics include: Star Wars, Disney’s Frozen II, and My Little Pony
New Releases!
November top releases are below and you can find more new releases via these lists:
New – Grant Writing Resources webpage
Looking for additional funding to grow your collection? Applying for grants? Many of the schools we work with don’t have the time to research and compose the responses that grant applications require. Let us help – this new resource provides research for how Sora can meet any number of grant opportunities for access, equity, DEI, and more.
Encourage Sora use over winter break
Curations
Did you know that OverDrive Digital Content Librarians send out two curations every month?! If you have books in your collection that match our lists, they will be included automatically, but you can always add more from your collection. These curations will appear in your curation drafts and can be edited and posted as you like. Reach out to Beth with questions or curation requests!
Sora product update – Filters
With the most recent Sora update, you’ll notice that we’ve replaced Preferences with “persistent” filters. When applied, filters will be sticky until they are removed..
The Filters menu is now accessible on the main Explore page. Students no longer need to access specific collections or search results in order to apply filters – they can filter the entire collection right away. To make this even easier, we’ve added format filter buttons near the top of the screen. Students can select any of these buttons to filter the entire collection appropriately.
Filters remain applied until they are removed. Navigating into a collection displays the same filter options that I previously selected…
Sora Google Classroom Add-On
Another recent feature is the Google Classroom Add-On. The new Sora Add-On allows you to browse your school’s catalog and attach specific titles to posts within Google Classroom. This is only available for schools using Google Workspace for Education Plus or the Teaching and Learning Upgrade. See here for details or reach out to Amanda with questions!
We hope everyone has a joyful and peaceful holiday season! Please let us know how we can help you prepare your collection in this last month or so before winter break!
Thanks,
Lena, Amanda, and Beth
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Flipped Classrooms: Just One More Week for Advantage Accounts & Marketplace
November is Advantage Accounts & Marketplace month for the WSDLC’s Flipped Classroom training series! This flipped classroom introduces the Advantage program and shows how users how they can use Marketplace to make the most of their Advantage accounts.
Want to get ahead? December’s theme is Curation. In this Flipped Classroom, you can 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.
What are the WSDLC’s Flipped Classrooms?
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.
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Tiny Case Studies: Graphic Novel Genre Study During Schoolwide Literacy Period
Description: “The Sauk Prairie Middle School has a 35 minute period each day called Schoolwide Literacy. We drop everything and each teacher reads to class for 20 minutes and then students read to self for 15 minutes. In January, we establish genre groups and students select their preferred genre focus. As I teacher, I selected to lead the graphic novel genre group. The problem: How do you display a graphic novel and read it out loud to 20-25 students at the same time?”
What Are 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.
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!
You can view all of the WSDLC’s Tiny Case Studies here.
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WSDLC Annual Membership Meeting: Topic Suggestions
We want to hear from the WSDLC members on what topics or themes you would be most interested in hearing about at the next Annual Membership Meeting being held in May 2023. This meeting is an opportunity for the Project Managers to get feedback from members, to highlight the achievements and updates from the year, and to share what changes and updates may be coming soon. This meeting kicks off with a guest speaker or a panel of participants, all centered around a certain theme.
Note about using Padlet: Padlet is completely free to use, but you do not need to create an account to submit your ideas or to comment on / show your support for others’ ideas. Any comments or suggestions made in our Padlet from users without an account will appear anonymously. If you want to avoid creating a Padlet account but wouldn’t like to be anonymous, go ahead and sign your name to your idea.
If you have an idea but want to use something other than Padlet, go ahead and email us your idea at wsdlc-info@wils.org.
Thank you very much!
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OverDrive’s End of Year Sale is Happening Now!
(Your eyes do not deceive you: today’s message has already mentioned the OverDrive End of Year Sale once, when we highlighted Lena’s messaging from last week. But these deals are just SO GOOD that they bear mentioning twice.)
If you purchase for your school or district’s Advantage account, you will want to take “advantage” of OverDrive’s biggest sale of the year with up to 50% off on over 150,000 titles through December 31st.
Sale titles include both eBooks and Audiobooks, and you can browse sale titles through several different collections put together by experts at OverDrive, such as 2022 Releases, Audiobooks under $30, Fixed Layout & Read-Alongs, and more! You can also search for titles by access level, format, and/or by genre!
Log in to your Marketplace Account for more information, to view sale titles, and to expand your local collections with titles only your students will be able to access.
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Intellectual Freedom Forum, hosted by WEMTA
WEMTA members have an opportunity to join in monthly discussions on Intellectual Freedom and what it means for Wisconsin school libraries. These discussions are scheduled for 6:30pm on the third Tuesday of each month (so the next one will be on December 20th).
Registration information will be sent to all WEMTA members ahead of time. Once registration opens, details will also be available on
WEMTA’s Events page.
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The WSDLC project managers and the team at OverDrive are always available if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions.
