Tuesday is here again, along with another week’s-worth of announcements and tidbits to share with you all! Right off the bat, we’re sharing a snapshot of stats showcasing what an impactful year 2024 was. It’s also the time of the year where we make available for download the MARC records for shared collection titles (for those schools that choose to upload them into their online catalogs). We also have a brief overview of when WSDLC members can expect their 2025-26 renewal information and price quotes; along with showcasing another Tiny Case Study and this month’s Flipped Classroom: Marketing & Training.
Updated MARC Records Available
For those schools that choose to display WSDLC-holdings in their online catalogs, the most recent set of WSDLC Shared Collection MARC records is now available to download as a ZIP file from the WSDLC website! You can find them on both the Collections Information and Circulation Policies page and on the MARC Records FAQ page.
You can download the MARC files for all five collections at once, or download each collection one-by-one. Each ZIP folder contains the MARC files for Ebooks, Audiobooks, and Magazines separately.
A few things to note:
- Sora Content Access Levels do not apply in online catalogs. Meaning if you upload MARC records for WSDLC shared collection content, your students will be able to search for every title in the collection (but they will not be able to check them out if the titles fall outside the students’ access level).
- The WSDLC recommends using Sora for searching directly and not uploading MARC records. Please contact the wsdlc-info@wils.org for assistance or questions.
If your district has filtered specific consortium titles from view of your students, you will need to remove those titles from your catalog individually once imported.
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Reminder: WSDLC Renewal/Pricing Timeline
We know that many schools are currently planning their 2025-26 budgets, so we’d like to take a brief moment to cover the WSDLC Renewal and Pricing process.
The WSDLC calculates pricing based on enrolled schools’ previous year’s certified enrollment numbers as reported to DPI and made available in WISEdash. For calculating 2025-26 costs, we will be using FTE counts from the 2024-25 academic year. This information is typically released by DPI in early March, which means WSDLC 2025-26 price quotes will be available in late-March 2025.
The cost for for the 2025-26 WSDLC membership year is $1.68 per enrolled student, based on schools’ 2024-25 FTE counts as reported to DPI.
As a reminder, in March 2023, the WSDLC Board approved keeping the cost per student steady for 2024-25, with a 2% increase for the following two membership years. The price was kept to $1.65 per student for the 2024-25 membership year; is increasing to $1.68 per student for 2025-26; and will increase to $1.72 per student for 2026-27.
Once DPI releases the certified enrollment data for the 2024-25 school year, we will be able to begin calculating the cost for each member district. All WSDLC 2025-26 renewal quotes will be sent out to each school/district’s WSDLC Main Contact(s) in late March 2025. The quotes will include a link to the renewal form, where members can indicate their intent to renew, as well as make contact changes and request updates to their district’s access (that is, add/remove access for schools/grades, adjust content access levels, etc).
To help you in your planning, as long as your enrolled schools haven’t seen a large change in enrollment between 2023-24 and 2024-25, and you aren’t planning to add/remove any grades/schools enrolled, you can calculate your estimated 2025-26 WSDLC Membership cost by taking your 2023-24 FTE of enrolled grades x $1.68.
If you have any questions about renewals, please reach out to the WSDLC Project Managers at wsdlc-info@wils.org.
Another small reminder: OverDrive Content Credit never expires.
With budgets on the mind, we also want to remind WSDLC Members that they could also consider purchasing OverDrive Content Credit with your Advantage Account! Content Credit never expires, and can be used when the timing works best for you to purchase additional titles that are popular with your students, new titles that the consortium hasn’t purchased [yet], or other titles that you would like to see available for your students.
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Tiny Case Studies: Getting Buy-In From Key Stakeholders
January’s training materials comes with a side of a Tiny Case Study! This month, we’re highlighting the Tiny Case Study Getting Buy-In From Key Stakeholders, submitted by Menasha Joint School District’s Jennifer Peterson!
Description: “You finally have ebooks, but now how do you get people to start using them? Who should you start with? How do you spread the word and garner interest?”
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 own 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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Flipped Classroom: Marketing & Training
This month’s Flipped Classroom is covering Marketing & Training, which we know this is a hot topic for many of you. We’ve given it a little refresh this year, and we hope that the ideas and resources we’ve pulled together here can work as a jumping point to implement your own marketing strategies. Included are:
- Lists of marketing techniques and actions from other WSDLC members and from the OverDrive team;
- Links to the OverDrive blog’s school library marketing spotlight and previous School Stars winners;
- Downloadable/Printable flyers, bookmarks, social media images, a coloring page, and so much more that are free to use; and
- Training Modules from OverDrive that you can send to your students, teachers, and caregivers!
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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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/.
