Submitted by damon-moore on
Happy November, Wisconsin libraries! This month, we asked our OverDrive Team to submit a guest feature to introduce themselves, highlight some common questions from around the state, and provide additional information about new tools coming soon.
Meet Your OverDrive Team
Alongside your WiLS Team, your library also has support through a dedicated team at OverDrive. They are a great source for questions, help, and anything OverDrive. Your OverDrive Team is comprised of Katie Strong (Account Manager), Meghan Volchko (Digital Content Librarian), and Alix Morris (Product Support Specialist). You can find their contact information in Marketplace under Support. They’ve also included a little info below to help get to know them better:
Katie Strong (Account Manager) – Katie was born and raised in the Madison area and returned to Madison after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. When not at work, she can be found spending time with her husband and dogs, hiking, running, reading, baking, or rooting for her beloved Green Bay Packers. She reads just about any genre of book, but especially likes historical fiction, and most recently, fantasy.
You can reach out to Katie at kstrong@overdrive.com or by phone at (216) 573-6886, ex. 1697.
Things to reach out to Katie for: general support, report requests, invoicing, login help, contracts, demos or trials, product requests, and more. When in doubt, send it to Katie and she will get it where it needs to go!
Meghan Volchko (Digital Content Librarian) – Meghan turned her love of reading into a career in librarianship and has an MLIS degree from Kent State. She has a school-aged daughter who prevents her from reading as much as she’d like to, along with her husband and a black cat. She loves the Great Lakes, traveling the world, cooking, and hiking. Her favorite book genres are romance, narrative nonfiction, true crime, and anything that makes her laugh.
You can reach out to Meghan at mvolchko@overdrive.com.
Things to reach out to Meghan for: cart creation, curation, automated carts/Shelf Express assistance, budget/holds advice, lending model questions, Book Club pricing, Marketplace tips and tricks, questions about titles/metadata, anything bookish!
Alix Morris (Product Support Specialist) – Alix is a museum buff who has degrees in history and public history. She has two kitties who frequently join in on Zoom calls with library partners, and enjoys biking, sewing, and gardening. She loves digging into a mystery, both at work when trying to figure out an issue and outside of work doing genealogy research. Her favorite book genres are true crime, horror and nature/science.
Alix can be reached at amorris@overdrive.com.
Things to reach out to Alix for: Authentication updates, adding or adjusting features in Libby such as guides or Call-to-Action campaigns, help with marketing or training materials for libraries, and anything that can be described as “this isn’t working the way it should/something seems wrong here.”
Question: How can any Wisconsin library improve the digital library experience for patrons?
- Stay up to date on current and future OverDrive updates: To stay ahead of new features and improvements for Libby and Marketplace, make sure you are signed up for our Newsletter for emails on product updates. In addition, you are always welcome to check-in with your OverDrive staff, as well as WiLS project management staff. Asking questions and engaging with the updates we roll out can uncover more and more ways to better use the collection. Finally, checking our OverDrive Blog is a great way to check for updates!
- Shelf Talkers: Shelf Talkers are a great way for any library to engage with specific titles. Libraries have used them for sharing in-library events, staff recommendations, communicating about wait times, denoting awards, read-alikes, and more. Learn more about how to add Shelf Talkers here.
- Engage with your OverDrive Team: Your OverDrive Team is here to help! In addition to WiLS, the Wisconsin Public Library Consortium also has a team of staff at OverDrive dedicated to working with Advantage libraries. Whether you have questions on purchasing, reporting tools, patron requests, or anything in between, your OverDrive Team is a great resource.
Question: What can any library staff member do about holds and long wait times?
- Encourage patrons to use tags – in August we released a notable Libby update, including making Tags more visible on the bottom menu bar within the Libby app. This helps make tags more accessible and creates better patron awareness of the tool. From this, libraries can encourage their patrons to place tags on titles instead of holds by using tags as an in-app TBR List. Free social media graphics, including highlighting tag usage, can be found on the OverDrive Resource Center.
- In addition to regular tags, your patrons can also use Notify Me Tags. Notify Me Tags are for titles that are not currently owned in the collection, but a patron would like to recommend or request the title be added. This feature will inform the patron that if the library adds the title, they will be notified it has been added to the collection. To learn more about how to educate your patron on tags, check out our training video here.
Both Notify Me Tags and regular tags are great tools for librarians, regardless of marketplace access, to educate their patrons and encourage more usage.