Sora & OverDrive Training Resources
for WSDLC Members
WSDLC Contact Information
WSDLC Team at OverDrive:
wsdlc@overdrive.com
WSDLC Project Managers:
wsdlc-info@wils.org
Find more details on who to contact and when on the Who to Contact with Questions page
General Knowledge
- Sora is the app where students read. Your students and staff can download the Sora app, or access Sora in a web browser. They will be accessing the Wisconsin Schools Digital Library Consortium (WSDLC), which is hosted on Sora.
- Marketplace is the back end administrative portal where you purchase titles for Sora, view student reading data, and more. You need a set username and password to access Marketplace. If you are unsure of your credentials, email wsdlc@overdrive.com.
- OverDrive is the parent company of Sora, the reading app and Marketplace, the back end administrative portal.
- You are members of a shared collection/consortium/shared library — WSDLC. All districts/schools who are members of WSDLC have access to the materials in the collection and share them.
- You also have an Advantage account – an account that allows you to offer additional titles exclusively for your district/school. It is free to have this account.
Learn more about what an Advantage account is here:
https://resources.overdrive.com/k12-advantage-overview/
Purchasing
Lending Models: the different licensing models for purchasing titles offered by our publishers
Lending models overview videoHow to shop in each lending model
Chart overview of lending models
Ownership data: how to see if a title is owned in WSDLC, and/or your Advantage account
Understanding title ownership statistics in Marketplace
Content credit
Content credit is credit you can purchase for your school, then apply to your titles at the time of purchase. Think of this as a Marketplace gift card.
How to purchase content creditHow to check your credit balance
Content Access Levels (CALs)
- Content access levels let you control which types of users can view and borrow certain titles in your digital collection. Content access levels are designed to let you manage access to titles based on age-appropriateness.
- Users are assigned a user type when you set up authentication. This is completely customizable by school/district – you get to choose which type you’d like each grade level to be set to. Users can see and access titles with access levels at or below their user type.
- Titles are assigned a content access level at the time of purchase and can be changed at any time.
The content access levels that WSDLC has set for the titles in its collection are as follows:
Upper High School: content that is purchased and intended for grades 11-12
Lower High School: content that is purchased and intended for grades 9-10
Middle School: content that is purchased and intended for grades 6-8
Upper Elementary: content that is purchased and intended for grades 3-5
Lower Elementary: content that is purchased and intended for grades PK-2
How to see the CAL of title
You can see the content access level of a title in Marketplace. Content access level labels do not display in Sora.
You can see this by searching for a title in Marketplace. Underneath the ownership statistics, the content access level of the title will display:
In this example, you can see that the title is set to Upper Elementary, therefore students set to any of the content access levels listed will have access to the title.
How to edit and set them
You can set content access levels for titles you own in your Advantage account at the time of purchase or edit them later.
Note that if the title is owned by WSDLC and your Advantage account, the lower content access level will take precedence.
For example, if WDSLC owns a title and it is set to Lower High School, you can purchase it in your Advantage account and set it to Middle School. Your middle schoolers will now be able to see the title.
How to know what my students are set to
Your students’ set content access levels are stored on OverDrive’s back end. Reach out to wsdlc@overdrive.com to confirm your students’ content access levels.
Hiding a Title from students
You can hide titles from your students that are owned in the shared collection by using the Advantage filtering tool:
Advantage filtering learning module
If you are in a district Advantage account this will hide the title for the whole district.
If you are in a school Advantage account this will hide the title for the school.
Title assignments
You can assign titles directly to students by using the title assignments feature:
You must own a copy in your Advantage account to assign it to a student – you cannot assign titles owned only in the shared collection.
Reports
When running reports in Marketplace, always filter by branch to see data for just your school/district.
Sora activity page
Use this page for an at a glance insight into your students behavior and progress in Sora.
Checkouts report
Use this report to checkout data for your students.
Current holds report
Use this report to see what titles your students have on hold and to create carts of titles your students have the longest wait time for.
How to run a current holds report
Understanding the data in the report
When creating a cart of titles your students have the longest wait time for, take into consideration:
- the “Cons ratio” to determine how long students are waiting for shared collection copies,
- “Adv holds” to see how many of your students have the title on hold, and
- ownership data.
Title status & usage report
Use this report to see inventory data for your Advantage collection
How to see individual student reading data
Due to student privacy policies, the shared collection does not display individual student user IDs in reports.
You can see individual student reading data by setting up and using the student dashboard:
How to customize the curations of titles on the Sora explore page
You can customize the collections/curations of titles students see on the Sora explore page for your students in your Advantage account.
By choosing to turn on Advantage curation in order to customize this for your students, you will no longer receive the regularly updated curations from WSDLC – you will need to update and keep the curations refreshed on your own.
How to turn on Advantage curation
Other topics
Need help with other topics regarding Sora or Marketplace? Check out these training websites made by the training team at OverDrive
- Training How-To Resources: https://resources.overdrive.com/k-12-schools/how-to-videos/
- Marketplace Help articles: https://help.marketplace.overdrive.com/home.htm
- Sora Help articles: https://help.soraapp.com/en-us/home.htm
- Email wsdlc@overdrive.com