Welcome to February! This month, we’ll be taking a look at how to place and manage holds.
Just like with physical books, students have the option to place a digital title on hold when there aren’t any copies available to check out. From their Sora account, they can see how many holds they currently have placed, their estimated wait time for each hold, and have the option to edit or cancel their hold.
Within OverDrive Marketplace and your Advantage Account(s), you also have the ability to place and manage holds for your students. But not only that, you also have at your disposal reports and tools that will help you to make collection development decisions to support your local collection in Sora.
Why is it important to manage holds?
Joining the WSDLC is beneficial for Wisconsin school libraries in a swarth of ways, with holds management of the shared collection by Project Managers and a dedicated Digital Content Librarian at OverDrive being one of them. (There is more on how the consortium manages holds at the end of this Flipped Classroom.) But as we all know, each Wisconsin school is different, and their students will be interested in different titles. It is beneficial for schools to utilize their Advantage Accounts to review and manage holds, especially on titles that are most popular with their students: this will keep wait times for titles lower, increasing the usefulness of Sora in students’ eyes, and will encourage them to keep reading.
How to Manage Holds
There are three major ways that WSDLC members libraries can manage holds and reduce wait times on titles in both the shared collection and their own local Advantage collections:
- Running the Holds reports out of Marketplace Oversights,
- Utilize the Holds Manager Tool in Marketplace, and
- Educate and train students on how to check out titles that they have placed on hold
Read more details about all three of these below:
Be sure to also review OverDrive’s self-paced module on managing holds!
Holds Reports
OverDrive’s Marketplace Insights has many reports that WSDLC members can run and review in order to make informed decisions about how their students are using and benefiting from the digital materials available in Sora. We’ll go into a deeper review of all of the reports available in Marketplace in April’s Flipped Classroom, but this month we’re going to focus on the Holds Reports.
Running the Holds Reports in Marketplace will allow you to see what titles are most popular in your school(s) and how long students are waiting for titles. This information can be helpful in planning titles to purchase, can be a guide for alerting students to other formats of these popular titles, and can be used to create curated lists of “readalike” titles.
Current Holds Report
You can see all holds that are currently placed on titles by running the appropriately-named report Current Holds: This report is found in Marketplace through Insights > Current Holds.
If you are looking for the holds for only your students, and not the entire consortium, adjust the Branch filter by selecting your school(s) when running this report.
Additionally, there are two main parameters that you can run this report by: By Title or By User.
➤ Title: Running the this report by Title allows you to view each title that your users currently have on hold (including preorder titles), and gives you an estimated time for how long your students are waiting for holds.
➤ User: Running this report by User will allow you to the number of holds for each user ID. The Average Wait Time is updated daily, and the Current Average Wait Period includes active holds placed by users who’ve borrowed a title in the last 90 days.
You can find out even more about these reports from OverDrive’s help article Understanding Advantage and shared collection/consortium data in the “Current holds” report.
Holds Manager Tool
OverDrive’s Holds Manager is a tool that will automatically order titles based on either the number of holds on titles or by a holds ratio. The Holds Manager can be set to different thresholds based on each collection and format individually and can be updated at any time.
Through their Advantage Account, schools can set up their own Holds Manager for purchasing popular titles. The Holds Manager can be set to build carts based on a holds ratio or number of holds and can have a price cap set. To do this, Marketplace users must have the Holds Management permission set on their account (if you don’t have this, reach out to the WSDLC OverDrive team and they will be able to get this set up for you).
Once logged in to Marketplace, click on the Shop dropdown menu, and select Automate Carts (OverDrive Insights), then Holds Manager.
You can read more about how Holds Manager works here: What is Holds Manager and How Do I Use It?
Send a message out on wsdlc-members@wils.org with your question(s), and you’re bound to get helpful, insightful responses.
OverDrive’s Digital Content Specialist also creates quarterly bundle carts for WSDLC members to purchase for their Advantage Collections, oftentimes creating lists based on the consortium’s most popular titles of that quarter.
Reach out to the Project Managers for title lists, order forms, and more information at wsdlc-info@wils.org.
Student Training & Reminders
But one of the most important ways you can help reduce wait times on titles and manage holds is through teaching and reminding your students how to receive their holds in Sora. After all, if students are placing titles on hold, but never claiming those holds, those wait times will never decrease.
When you have classroom time or when you’re talking to students about Sora, make sure students know how to check for available holds so they never miss their change to checkout a title; or they can move it along for the next student in line to read.
To assist in getting this information to students OverDrive has a number of ready-to-use training tools for holds that can be shared in classrooms, newsletters, and other places for your students (and their grownups) to refer to and learn more:
- How to borrow an available hold Sora Help Article – Make sure students know how to borrow an available hold, or choose “Get it later” if they’re not ready to begin reading right away.
- How to get hold notifications on your device or computer Sora Help Article – Help students set up notifications on their device or browser so they never miss an available hold.
- How-to videos on Sora’s YouTube Channel – Browse short how-to videos about holds and other Sora features to share with your students.
You can refer back to last month’s Flipped Classroom: Marketing & Training for ideas that you can adapt to help teach and remind students on how to claim their holds. And check below for an approved-to-share resource from a WSDLC member!
Tip from a WSDLC Member
Need even more inspiration, or a quick-and-fun resource to share with your students? Jennifer Peterson of Menasha Joint School District (and WSDLC Board Member) created this excellent video to show students how to get the titles they placed on hold- and she’s approved it for sharing and use for all WSDLC members!
“If you are like me, you realize that most of your students and staff don’t know how to access their Sora books on hold once they place them. My Students are crazy about putting books on hold, but not so much about actually getting those books which causes a slow down. So I made this quick, quirky video in hopes of helping students and staff.“
-Jennifer Peterson
Thank you so much for sharing, Jennifer!
How the Consortium Manages Holds
Even though this Flipped Classroom Training Series is focused on sharing tools, strategies, and best-practices for WSDLC Members to utilize in their Advantage Accounts, we want to be transparent on how the Project Managers manage holds at the shared-collection level as well.
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Holds Manager Tool
The WSDLC utilizes the Holds Manager to help make sure students across the state don’t have to wait too long for a title to become available.
As of 2021, the shared collection’s Holds Manager is set to purchase new titles every week based on these settings:- the Juvenile ebook collection is set to purchase one copy for a holds ration of 5 (or higher); and audiobook collections are set to purchase one copy for a holds ratio of 3 (or higher),
- the YA ebook and audiobook collections are set to purchase one copy for every five holds,
- the Adult ebook and audiobook collections are set to purchase one copy for every three holds, and
- titles (audiobook and ebook) that cost less than $15 are set to purchase one copy for a holds ratio of 3 (or higher).
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Curating “Read Alike” Lists
The WSDLC’s dedicated Digital Content Specialist at OverDrive keeps a close eye on the consortium’s most popular titles, and to help relieve wait-times and to keep students reading, will add read-alikes of those high-hold titles into a curated collection for students to discover. Sometimes these curations are geared towards specific titles; and other times the curated collections encompass read-alikes for multiple titles. You can review the consortium’s current curated collections (say that five times fast!) on the WSDLC’s Sora Showcase page here.
We’ll also be covering this topic extensively in next month’s Flipped Classroom: Curation. -
Lucky Day
Another way that the WSDLC works hard towards keeping holds down is by utilizing OverDrive’s Lucky Day feature. Lucky Day is a Marketplace curation feature that sets aside copies of titles that can’t be placed on hold or renewed. This allows users to skip the waitlist for popular titles, whether it’s a new title or a classic that everyone is wanting to read, and borrow them right away.
In the WSDLC, this collection is populated at the consortium level, and all content access levels will still apply. Titles that are purchased and placed into the Lucky Day collections can be checked out on a first-come-first-serve basis, and are available for a 14 day loan period with no renewals. Because these titles are on a first-come-first-serve basis, you may notice titles come and go from the Lucky Day Collection; this is normal! As books in this collection a checked out, they are removed from the collection but once returned, they will become discoverable within this collection once again.
Just like the Read-Alike lists noted above, these lists are rotating and can be found in Sora under the It’s Your Lucky Day! curated collection.Advantage accounts can also create their own Lucky Day collections with titles that have a minimum of one copy in the circulating collection already. Reach out to the WSDLC OverDrive team for more information on how you can utilize this feature at your school(s).
And this brings us to the end of another Flipped Classroom!
If you have any questions, or would just like to know more about getting started with OverDrive, we encourage you to schedule a 20-minute one-on-one session with OverDrive. Contact the WSDLC OverDrive team (wsdlc@overdrive.com) to schedule a session or ask a question.
If you have questions specifically about the WSDLC consortium, you can contact wsdlc-info@wils.org.
Join us again next month to learn about Curation!
You can view the full year’s training plan and revisit previous Flipped Classrooms here: WSDLC Training Schedule