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Vol. 44 No. 2 — March 2024

EDTECH
Building an Affordable Statewide Audio and Ebook Collection
by Sara Gold

History

The idea for WSDLC came from the success Wisconsin has had with Wisconsin’s Digital Library (wplc.overdrive.com/wplc-114-119/content), a library-funded statewide collection of digital materials that serves the state’s public library patrons. This collection, utilizing OverDrive as the platform and content provider, has been in place since 2006. In 2010, OverDrive introduced the School Download Library. Wisconsin soon had one of the highest adoption rates for the program in the country—although, the program was cost-prohibitive for many districts. At the same time, Wisconsin’s Digital Library expanded significantly, with a $1.2 million collection budget. It was then that school media specialists, such as Jennifer Peterson of Menasha Joint School District, began to ask if it was possible to create a similar shared collection for schools. In Peterson’s case, she already had a large ebook collection within her district. However, she was hoping a shared collection on a larger level would save her time—through not having to select and curate every title—and money. The average ebook cost is $27, and a statewide collection would greatly reduce her collection budget costs.

When this project was an idea in peoples’ minds, it needed a project manager to offer organization and guidance. Enter WiLS (wils.org), a nonprofit member organization serving libraries and cultural institutions in Wisconsin. The WiLS staff had experience providing management for an existing statewide consortium, the Wisconsin Public Library Consortium (WPLC; wplc.info), which oversees Wisconsin’s Digital Library. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) hired WiLS to begin work on this project in 2014.

WiLS researched the school ebook landscape in Wisconsin and across the country, summarizing the findings in a report (see wsdlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/final-report-2015-1.pdf). In 2015, it took the results of this report to the state school library conference—WEMTA—and got feedback from attendees. In 2016, a think tank was formed consisting of school media specialists, school district business administrators, curriculum people, and representatives from the cooperative educational service agencies (CESAs). The think tank acknowledged that the project needed a structure that would allow buy-in from partners and districts around the state. Wisconsin has two large school districts of more than 20,000 students, and the rest of the state is made up of medium, small, and very small rural districts. The consensus of think tank participants was that a member-funded consortium would be an ideal model for the project.

The Wisconsin DPI, CESA Purchasing, and WiLS were established as project partners; each brought unique strengths and connections to the WSDLC consortium. Between the end of 2016 and beginning of 2017, an interim board was established that included three media specialists from around the state and representatives from the Wisconsin DPI, CESA Purchasing, the statewide CESA network, and WiLS. WSDLC’s interim board established a governance structure, wrote the bylaws and collection development policy, determined a sustainable funding structure through an annual membership fee, and helped write and issue an RFP. In 2017, OverDrive was announced as the first vendor partner of WSDLC, and an opening day collection of ebooks went live in January 2018, serving 86 districts and 94,650 students. Audiobooks were added in 2019 and proved to be widely popular for middle and high school students.

At the time of its launch, the WSDLC library was divided into three collections of ebooks by grades: K–4, 5–8, and 9–12. WSDLC’s board worked closely with OverDrive to determine how much it would cost to fund an adequately sized opening day collection. WSDLC’s board then promoted the WSDLC heavily throughout the state to build a membership. WSDLC is unique in that it is funded almost entirely through annual membership fees, which are currently $1.65 per student. There are no additional fees to join, and students are able to access each of the three collections based on their content access level settings for a single, per-student price. Districts have a great deal of flexibility in joining WSDLC, with some adding all schools and grades at once and others adding a grade or two at a time to test the waters. Private schools are part of the WSDLC membership as well. WSDLC membership is treated like a subscription and runs from September to August of the following year. Member schools and districts have the option to join throughout the year for a prorated price.

Funding

WSDLC’s funding model is simple but very effective. The per-student fee allows the consortium to increase its funding as the membership increases. The board sets the membership fees in 3-year increments to allow members to budget year over year for any fluctuations. Out of the per-student annual fee, 25 cents goes to administration, such as the fees for project management contracts, materials, registration for conferences, and web-hosting. The remaining amount is used for collection development. At the end of each membership year, any remaining collection funds are split, with 10% going into the WSDLC reserve fund and the rest being added to the collection budget for the upcoming year. Wisconsin is fortunate to have Wisconsin’s Common School Fund (CSF; dpi.wi.gov/sfs/aid/categorical/common-school-fund), which is given to public school districts annually and can be used to purchase library books and other instructional materials. The CSF is the primary—and often only—source of funding for school libraries in Wisconsin. Managed by the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands, the CSF was established by Wisconsin’s constitution in 1848 with the granting of about 1.5 million acres of land for educational purposes. The vast majority of these lands were sold to create the principal for a permanent school fund, with the earnings to be exclusively used to support and maintain school libraries. In 2022, the amount distributed to Wisconsin public school districts through the CSF was $52 million. WSDLC membership fees are an eligible use of CSF, which helps ensure that districts can afford to remain members year after year.

Governance

WSDLC includes a board with elected and appointed members representing the WSDLC partners and each of the 12 CESAs. Board members serve for up to 3 years depending on whether they are elected or appointed, and the board chair serves for 2 years. The board follows a set of operational guidelines and meets virtually five times a year. In addition, the Selection Advisory Committee is a group of members who volunteer to serve a 2-year term to provide guidance for collection development and review any requests for reconsideration. The current board chair, Peg Billing, from Lakeland Union High School in Minocqua, Wis., sums up WSDLC’s shared governance very well:

The WSDLC is an organization of and for the students and teachers of Wisconsin. It is governed by working school media specialists. I strongly believe that what sets this consortium apart from all others that I have participated in is that we, the school librarians on the board, truly have a REAL say in what happens. Our governance structure is set up to ensure fair across-the-state representation of both large and small districts and schools. In addition, we allow a number of ‘at-large’ members to help balance out the representation. This structure ensures that everyone, no matter the size of the district or school, has someone on the Board with their best interests in mind.

Collections and Access

Today, the WSDLC collections have grown to include 58,000-plus copies of more than 20,000 unique titles. The collections have shifted in grade levels slightly over time, with the elementary collection designed for grades K–5; the middle school collection for grades 6–8; and the high school collection for grades 9–12. In addition to access to the shared collections, each WSDLC school or district member can, through an advantage program, add titles that are available to their students and staffers only. This provides autonomy to individual members by allowing them to add titles for classroom use as well as create their own unique curated collections.

Materials for inclusion in the shared collections are selected by collection development librarians at OverDrive, with guidance and feedback provided by WSDLC’s Selection Advisory Committee. In addition to offering ebooks and audiobooks to students, the collection now includes a large assortment of magazines, comic books, and graphic novels. The WSDLC also provides fiction and nonfiction titles in English and Spanish that are designated to get students to read for fun and learning. A popular collection of readalongs is used by members to encourage reluctant readers, and WSDLC includes many copies of award winners and Battle of the Books titles to ensure accessibility with short or no wait times. For extremely popular titles, WSDLC has a Lucky Day collection, which features titles that are available immediately with no holds allowed.

WSDLC has a commitment to offering titles from traditionally underrepresented authors and includes an annual diversity audit as part of the collection development process. Providing materials to reach each student is an essential goal of WSDLC. Gidget Moore, the school library media specialist for Viroqua Area Schools and a WSDLC board member, says, “Being a part of the WSDLC when they added the audiobook collection is one of the proudest moments in my career, because it evened the educational landscape for students who found reading to be difficult. More than anything, the WSDLC supported students when the task of physically reading was insurmountable, bringing worlds only found in books to those previously denied the experience.”

Content access levels allow school media specialists to determine what titles are accessible to their students. In addition, OverDrive provides media specialists with the ability to hide titles at the school or district levels without affecting the access to other members. This feature is instrumental in helping WSDLC meet members where they are.

Policies

An important role of WSDLC is maintaining current policies, particularly around collection development (wsdlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/WSDLC-Collection-Development-Policy-Current-2023-Approved.pdf) and reconsideration of materials. The policies are reviewed annually by the Selection Advisory Committee and WSDLC’s board. Following an increase in book challenges in Wisconsin, the board issued a statement on WSDLC’s shared collections (wsdlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Statement-on-WSDLC-Shared-Collections-.pdf), which is part of the foundational documents of WSDLC’s commitment to intellectual freedom.

Training

Training and support are very important for members. WiLS and OverDrive partnered to create an extensive library of training materials from flipped classrooms on various topics, such as getting started on curating collections as well as tiny case studies, which are written by members and focus on their solving specific problems (e.g., integrating graphic novels into the classroom). WSDLC is also represented at state conferences and holds an annual membership meeting in the spring. Its website (wsdlc.org/about) has an extensive set of helpful resources and marketing materials, many of which are customizable. A weekly newsletter provides a wealth of information for members as well.

WSDLC utilizes a variety of ways to measure results and gather feedback from members, including an annual member survey, the membership meeting, and, with the board’s guidance, an annual wishlist provided to OverDrive that contains items we wish to improve on, whether it is reports and statistics or the accessibility of OverDrive’s Sora app. WSDLC also uses a member listserv and a board listserv and sends out weekly messages to each. The project managers meet biweekly with the OverDrive team as well.

The development of WSDLC has been breathtaking to witness. In 5 years, it has grown to serve 44% of all school-age students in Wisconsin with 24/7 access to the collections and more than 4 million checkouts. The equity through access that WSDLC is delivering to Wisconsin schools that were previously unable to provide ebooks and audiobooks to their students is the greatest achievement thus far of WSDLC.