Happy Tuesday! This week we have the listing of all of the new titles that were added in October, along with a reminder on this month’s Flipped Classroom topic, Purchasing. We’re also sharing two other topics from the community: OverDrive’s End of Year Sale is on now(!), and early registration for WEMTA’s Battle of the Books ends on Friday.
Have a great week, everyone!

New Titles Added in October

In October, 619 all-new titles were added to the shared collections!
Breaking that total down into different categories, those 621 titles are:

• 166 Ebooks;
  47 Audiobooks; and
  406 Magazines
• 116 titles were added into the Lower Elementary collection;
  94 titles were added into the Upper Elementary collection;
  148 titles were added into the Middle School collection;
  256 titles were added into the Lower High School collection; and
  5 titles were added into the Upper High School collection
• 63 Spanish language Ebooks were added
• 57 of the Magazine titles added are in languages other than English:
  3 Chinese language magazines were added;
  13 French language magazines were added;
  5 German language magazines were added;
  7 Italian language magazines were added;
  8 Japanese language magazines were added;
  6 Portuguese language magazines were added;
  14 Spanish language magazines were added; and
  1 Turkish language magazine was added

A complete list of all the new titles added in October, along with their format and content access level(s), can be viewed as a Google Sheet here.

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Flipped Classroom: Purchasing

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.

November 1st began the third topic in our Flipped Classroom Training Series: Purchasing! In this Flipped Classroom, you’ll get an inside look at how titles are selected and purchased for the Consortium. You’ll also find more details on how to purchase titles for your Advantage account: learn how to build and manage carts, add content credit, adjust the content access level for your purchases, and read some tips and tricks on how to avoid accidentally purchasing titles more than once (when you don’t necessarily mean to).

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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OverDrive’s Annual End of Year Sale is Happening Now!

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 100,000 titles through December 31st!
The End of Year Sale includes both eBooks and Audiobooks, and the staff at OverDrive has created helpful lists so you can browse sale titles by format, reading level, genre, and more! Easily find 2024 Releases, Audiobooks under $30, Biographies & Autobiographies, Diverse Reads, and so many more!
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.

Side note: Keep an eye on your inboxes! WSDLC’s dedicated Digital Content Specialist will be building Advantage Bundle Carts with sale-titles for WSDLC members to get more bang for their buck in an easy, straightforward Google Form that will be available soon!

What are Advantage Bundle Carts?
The WSDLC’s dedicated Digital Content Specialist Librarian at OverDrive combs through the WSDLC’s usage stats and identifies the most popular, high-demand titles in the shared collection, and then prepackages these titles into five different sets (based on Content Access Levels) that WSDLC member schools 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 to run usage stats yourself. Just a simple, straightforward way to reduce students’ wait times on the titles they want most.
And in the case of OverDrive’s End of Year Sale, the WSDLC’s DCSL identifies the sale titles that WSDLC students are checking out the most, so WSDLC member schools can know that they are getting the best collection of digital titles and the best price.

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In the Community: Early Registration for WEMTA’s Battle of the Books Ends Friday!

On Friday November 15th, early registration will close for WEMTA’s 2024 Battle of the Books. Not sure if you’ll have a team ready before the end of the week? Don’t sweat it- regular registration runs from November 16th until December 15th; and credit-card-only registration continues through January 15th.

To help support students as they participate in WEMTA’s Battle of the Books, WSDLC Project Managers are purchasing additional ebook, audiobook, and Spanish-language (when available) copies of the titles on each reading list, and curated collections have been created for each division. You can find (and share!) the curated collections through the links below:
Elementary Division Titles
Middle Division Titles
Senior Division Titles

What is WEMTA’S Battle of the Books (BoB)? Simply put, the Battle of the Books 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 everyone in the team, they 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 competition 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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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/.