Happy Tuesday, and welcome back to school everyone! In this week’s message, the [Re]Introduction to the WSDLC series continues with the shared collections: what they include, how titles are purchased, and how you can recommend a title; we’re sharing last month’s usage stats; we have information and links for two exciting contests (WEMTA’s Battle of the Books and OverDrive’s Sora School Stars) that may be of interest to you; and reminders for Advantage Bundle Carts and the Flipped Classroom training series.
Have a great week, all!
[Re]Introduction to the WSDLC: Collection
The WSDLC collections in Sora contain over 22,000 individual titles (over 18,000 ebooks; over 4,000 audiobooks; and 350 magazine titles), and over 65,000 copies.
Today, all titles fall into one of three different collections/access levels:
- K-5 Collection. Also referred to as the Juvenile collection. This has content that has been rated for grades K-5.
- 6-8 Collection. Also referred to as the Young Adult collection. This has content that has been rated for grades 6-8. Students approved for access to the YA collection and will also have access to the Juvenile collection.
- 9-12 Collection. Also referred to as the Adult collection. This has content that has been rated for grades 9-12. Students approved for access to the Adult collection will also have access to the Juvenile and YA collections.
Additional collections/access levels for the WSDLC are currently being configured by OverDrive’s talented Expanded Content Access Levels Implementation Team, and later this Fall there will be five different collections/access levels:
- K-2 Collection / Early Elementary Collection. This will have content that has been rated for grades PreK-2.
- 3-5 Collection / Upper Elementary Collection. This will have content that has been rated for grades 3-5, and will also include access to the K-2 Collection.
- 6-8 Collection / Middle School Collection. This will have content that has been rated for grades 6-8, and will also include access to the K-2 and 3-5 Collections.
- 9-10 Collection / Lower High School Collection. This will have content that has been rated for grades 9-10, and will also include access to the K-2, 3-5, and 6-8 Collections.
- 11-12 Collection / Upper High School Collection. This will have content that has been rated for grades 11-12, and will also include access to the K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-10 Collections.
Students at member schools can view and check out any title that falls within their assigned content access level(s). In other words, students that are given access to only the Juvenile collection will only be able to view and check out the titles that fall within that collection; they will not be able to view or check out titles from the YA or Adult collections. Titles that are owned by the consortium are available to all students/schools at the title’s assigned collection/content access level. If districts find that there are titles that do not fall in to their local Collection Policies, or do not suit their district, they have the option to enable Advantage Filtering. (To learn more about Advantage Filtering, you can watch this video, or reach out to wsdlc@overdrive.com for support.)
PLEASE NOTE: Sora Content Access Levels do not apply in online catalogs. This means if you upload MARC records for WSDLC content, your students will be able to search for every title in the collection. The WSDLC recommends using Sora for searching directly and not uploading MARC records. Please contact the wsdlc-info@wils.org for assistance or questions.
Selection & Purchasing
The cost of membership to the WSDLC for the 2024-25 year is $1.65/student. Of that cost, $1.45/student is used to purchase content for the consortium’s collections.
The WSDLC shared collections are curated by an OverDrive Content Specialist who selects new content for the consortium to consider for purchases on a weekly basis, based on the review sources mentioned above and while closely following the WSDLC Collection Development Policy. The WSDLC Project Manager reviews these selections, determines the quantity of each title to order, and purchases additional copies of titles to fill holds to enhance the collections (like Battle of the Books titles), and purchases award winning titles and titles that have been recommended for purchase.
Schools also have the option to purchase additional content that is available for only their school(s) that show up alongside the shared collection’s offerings in Sora for seamless access for students. This purchasing is done through a school’s Advantage Account in Marketplace, where schools have the option to be invoiced for purchases or to create a “deposit account” (referred to as Content Credit).
You can find more about Advantage purchasing on the WSDLC website’s Advantage FAQs page and in OverDrive’s self-guided module Marketplace Essentials: The Shopping & Admin Portal.
Recommend a Title
The WSDLC website includes a form that library media specialists, educators, and others at participating schools and districts can fill out to suggest a title for purchase for the shared collection. Suggestions submitted through this form are collected by the WSDLC Project Managers and then reviewed against the WSDLC Selection Policy (Section C of the Collection Policy). If the suggested title matches this policy, and is available for purchase through OverDrive Marketplace, the title will be added to the collection.
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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August’s Usage Statistics
As we noted a couple of weeks ago when we shared the summer stats, August was gearing up to get back on track to another record-breaking school year of Sora usage! The checkouts are climbing and the wait time is dropped, all consistently with previous years:
- August 2024 Checkout Totals:
- Ebooks: 18,310
- Audiobooks: 6,919
- Magazines: 617
- August 2024 Holds Totals:
- Ebooks: 3,120 (493 less than in July)
- Audiobooks: 372 (3 more than in July)
- August 2024 Unique Users: 5,148 (1,014 more than in July)
- August 2024 Average Hold Wait Time: 60 days – already 19 days shorter than this time last month. (And with more and more Wisconsin students rejoining the classroom and getting back into schoolyear routines, this number will continue to drop fast.)
You can view the full calendar year’s statistics, which includes detailed information on circulation numbers, holds, and other metrics, broken down by month, as a Google Sheet here.
If you’re interested in historical data, you can find .xlsx spreadsheets of past statistics at the bottom of the WSDLC Year to Date Statistics page.
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In the Community: Early Registration for WEMTA’s Battle of the Books is Open
On September 1st, early registration opened for 2025’s Battle of the Books, hosted by WEMTA!
To help support students as they participate in WEMTA’s Battle of the Books, the WSDLC purchases additional ebook and audiobook copies of the titles on each reading list, and curated collections have been created for each division in Sora! You can find (and share with your students!) the curated collections through the links below:
Elementary Division Titles
Middle Division Titles
Senior Division Titles
If you aren’t familiar with WEMTA’s Battle of the Books: BoB is an online trivia competition for students across Wisconsin. There are three divisions for students to compete in: Elementary (grades 4-6), Middle (grades 6-8), and Senior (grades 8+). Students can form teams of 2-4 people and, between them read from a list of 20 books. Starting in early February, students have the opportunity to participate in “practice battles”, and the official Battle of the Books runs the last full week of February.
You can learn more about the BoB on the Battle of the Books webpage.
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Flipped Classroom: Getting Started has Begun!
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 are 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 on their own and OverDrive staff are ready to schedule one-on-one 20-minute sessions to answer members’ questions.
September kicks off the Flipped Classroom training series with Getting Started! During this flipped classroom, members can get an overview of how to use Sora, learn the various lending models, and get a brief introduction to OverDrive Advantage accounts and Marketplace (with more details on these topics coming in later months).
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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Reminder: Advantage Bundle Carts for Easier Ordering
In August 2024, an entirely new set of Advantage Bundle Carts were packaged and are ready for your orders! This month, Beth Saxton (the WSDLC’s dedicated Digital Content Specialist Librarian at OverDrive) has identified the most popular titles in the WSDLC collection since April 2024, and have the following carts available for WSDLC members to purchase for only their students to access:
August 2024’s High-Demand Title Bundles
Juvenile (K-5) – 27 titles for $409.87
Young Adult (6-8) – 14 titles for $505.21
Adult (9-12) – 12 titles for $496.32
Reach out to the WSDLC Project Managers at wsdlc-info@wils.org for the order form
When completing the order form, you’ll have the opportunity to specify if you’re purchasing 1-, 2-, or all 3 of the packages; and if you’d like your purchase(s) to be billed by invoice, issuing a PO, or by content credit that you already have deposited in your Advantage Account(s)- whatever works best for you!
Orders will be processed on Wednesdays.
Previous Advantage Bundles are still available, too!
The three Advantage Bundle Carts that were released earlier this year can still be purchased. (Or purchased again!) Details on each of those carts are below:
- April 2024’s High Demand Title Bundles
- Hi-Lo Titles for Middle & High School
- January 2024’s High Demand Title Bundles
Notes:
“High Demand” is determined as the audiobooks and ebooks that have the highest numbers of holds and checkouts within the shared collections.
These lists are not customizable for ordering. Please reach out to the OverDrive team at wsdlc@overdrive.com for additional options.
What Are Advantage Bundle Carts?
Every few months, the WSDLC’s dedicated Digital Content Specialist Librarian at OverDrive, Beth Saxton, identifies themes of titles in the shared collection and prepackages them into bundles/carts (based on Content Access Levels) 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, and no logging in to OverDrive Marketplace. Just a simple, straightforward way to get your students the titles they want most.
Save yourself time and money, and help get those high-interest, high-hold titles into the hands of your students faster by ordering today!
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OverDrive’s School Stars is Open for Submissions!
Is your school doing some Sora-related marketing/promoting/sharing this school year that you’re already excited for and proud of? Then enter OverDrive’s global contest, School Stars! School Stars celebrates the variety of ways schools promote Sora and will be open for submissions through March 28th! There are different categories to enter: bulletin boards, community engagement, social media posts, classroom engagement, and even an opportunity for your students to create something to submit!
If you’ve done any promotional work since July 2024, or if you have plans for something coming up before March 28th, consider entering this contest! We say this often, but it always rings true: no accomplishment or action is too small to enter!
Learn more about School Stars 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/.
