Getting Started with OverDrive

Getting Started with OverDrive

Training materials:

What are my options for authentication?

OverDrive’s Set Up Student Sign-In Process page provides information about these options.

Can I get accounts for my staff members?

Yes. They are set up using whatever authentication method the district has chosen. WSDLC members interested in setting up staff accounts can contact Amanda Lawman at wsdlc@overdrive.com.


It takes too many steps to log in!  It’s too difficult for our youngest students to log in!  What can we do?
You have some options:

  • Have your students link directly to the WSDLC using the Sora browser version (https://soraapp.com/library/wsdlcwi). They would simply select their school from the dropdown and log in using their school credentials.
  • To make it easier for your students to set up Sora using the app version, you can use a setup code that is specifically for your district or school.  Students would use this instead of the WSDLC code (wsdlcwi). Then, students can select their district or school from the dropdown and log in with their school credentials.
  • Consider using User Login Manager for your youngest students.  You can set up short user names (as few as 5 characters) with the same password for all students.  You can implement this for any grades you choose while keep your existing authentication for the other grades.

How does OverDrive know what collection(s) a student should have access to?
When your school is set up on OverDrive, you’ll let them know two things

  1. What field in your student information has the student’s grade level, graduation year, or other data you would like to use to determine what collections they have access to.
  2. How the values in that field link to what collection(s) they should have access to.

For example, let’s say you have a field in your student information called “grade level”. The values in that field for your elementary school are “K”, “1”, “2”, “3”, “4”, or “5”. You’d like your K-4 students to have access to the Upper Elementary collection, and your 5th grade students to have access to both the Upper Elementary and Middle School collections. You would let OverDrive know that the field you would like to use to set collection access is called “grade level” and if the field is set to “K”,”1″,”2″,”3″, or “4”, that student should have access to the Upper Elementary collection and if the field is set to “5”, that student should have access to both the Upper Elementary and Middle School collection.

What if I want a specific student to be able to access a different collection than the rest of their grade?
Whether or not you will be able to do this and how it is done is dependent on your authentication method. Please contact Amanda Lawman at wsdlc@overdrive.com for help.

I’m receiving all of these emails about the shared collection (holds, purchasing, etc).  How do I make them stop?
In order to stop receiving email notifications about the shared collection, login to Marketplace, select the “News” dropdown and then select “Notification preferences”.
Once there, scroll to the bottom and make sure the shared collection notification options are switched to “No” (you’ll still want to receive your own Advantage collection notifications).