The Wisconsin Public Library Consortium (WPLC) has published the WPLC Year in Review 2016-2017 highlighting decisions made and work done in by WPLC from June 2016 through May 2017. OverDrive, Statistics, Digitization, Goals for 2018 and more.
Did you know? (more below)
- In 2016, circulation in Wisconsin’s Digital Library grew to nearly 4 million, a 400,000 increase over the previous year.
- Instructions and templates were created to help WPLC members more easily run and present their own OverDrive statistics.
- The Digital Projects Toolkit, a train-the-trainer-style self-guided online course to help library systems get started with digitization, was created and launched.
The Wisconsin Public Library Consortium (WPLC) was formed in 2001 as an organization in Wisconsin where library systems could partner on projects that move libraries forward through experimentation and R&D. The main and most popular service the consortium has developed is the Wisconsin Digital Library, which is available to all Wisconsin residents with a public library card. The digital library provides access for library patrons to digital audio and e-books as well as other e-content on a wide range of subjects.
WPLC Year in Review: At A Glance
● In 2016, circulation in Wisconsin’s Digital Library grew to nearly 4 million, a 400,000 increase over the previous year.
● The WPLC worked to reduce holds and wait times by implementing changes to purchasing processes and reporting.
● An additional $150,000 was added to the 2018 budget for Wisconsin’s Digital Library to be allocated to WPLC Advantage collections based on each accounts holds.
● Digital magazines were removed from the collection due to the termination of partnership between OverDrive and Barnes & Noble.
● Wisconsin’s Digital Library got an overhaul with an updated website.
● Instructions and templates were created to help WPLC members more easily run and present their own OverDrive statistics.
● 85,000 pages of historical newspapers from 12 communities around the state were added to the Archive of Wisconsin Newspapers.
● The Digital Projects Toolkit, a train-the-trainer-style self-guided online course to help library systems get started with digitization, was created and launched.
● Four webinars were created and presented for WPLC members on how to develop research questions and gather quality data from library users and non-users.
● WPLC Bylaws revision began in order to, among other things, clarify the relationships among the governing bodies and will be completed by the end of 2017.