Sora Sweet Reads returns May 15, 2023

This year’s Sora Sweet Reads program will be available to all schools globally and will include another robust collection of titles, ranging from juvenile to general adult interest. You can get a sneak peek at some of the titles in the graphic!

The titles will be simultaneous-use, so all students can read without a wait and librarians don’t have to do any extra work to add them. The titles will appear at the top of district's Sora explore page on May 15 and will be ready to use right away (unless a district chooses to opt out).

So, save the date for 2023’s Sora Sweet Reads program, which will run May 15 through August 28, 2023.  For more information about Sweet Reads, visit this Sora blog post. For ideas on how to help students read all summer long, visit this Sora blog post. 

April is School Library Month!

"School Library Month is the American Association of School Librarians' celebration of school librarians and school libraries. Every April school librarians are encouraged to host activities to help their school and local community celebrate the essential role that strong school libraries play in transforming learning." - AASL 

Download Sora's School Library Month marketing kit that contains s free marketing kit, featuring social graphics, posters and a fun word search.

Information compiled in this update was provided by our partners at Sora

Your dedicated OverDrive team will be hosting a live, 45-minute webinar this Wednesday, February 22nd at 10:30 AM for members of Pennsylvania IU shared collections (including Lancaster-Lebanon IU13) who want to get more out of their OverDrive Advantage account. Register here!

This session will be recorded. A link to the recording and follow up materials will be sent to all registrants, including those unable to join live.

During this session, the following will be reviewed:

• Accessing reports relevant for Advantage
• Responding to student demand
• Expanding your Advantage collection
• Promoting with Advantage-level curation & Sora Showcase
• Q&A

If you have any question, please reach out to Meredith Wemhoff, Account Manager at OverDrive Education, at mwemhoff@overdrive.com

Sora has seen quite a few changes over the past few months and with all the emails that land in your inbox, it can be easy to miss an announcement or two. To help you get caught up on all things Sora, below is a list of seven new features and tools you may have missed. Check them out below:

• Google Classroom Add-On –  The new Sora Add-On allows you to browse your school’s catalog and attach specific titles to posts within Google Classroom.
• Only available for schools using Google Workspace for Education Plus or the Teaching and Learning Upgrade.
• See here for details.
• On-Demand Class Sets – Feedback from schools helped us develop a more flexible curriculum-centered lending model option.
• Content Bundles – Reserve titles and offer exclusive access to select users. Great for curriculum titles, classroom libraries, professional development for staff and more.
• Sora Extras – Add learning resources like DOGO News and Method Learning to Sora.
• Comics & Magazines – All access comics and magazines packages are now available for Sora! Contact your Account Manager for pricing.
• Sora Showcase – Give your digital collection a physical presence with our free interactive discovery kiosk software! Contact Zach Delin at OverDrive to get started.
• Student Dashboard – Admins can now see more detailed individual and aggregated reading data to help make data-driven decisions about literacy and reading initiatives.

Announcement: OverDrive will be updating their network configuration on October 10, 2022.

Action required by School Districts

School Districts may currently be allowing 207.54.136.106, 207.54.137.114, and 207.54.137.115 through their firewall for OverDrive to connect with their ILS/LMS to authenticate users during the sign in process. If so, districts need to update their firewall before October 10, 2022, to allow the following subnet: 134.195.60.0/24. This will ensure there is no disruption for users. For now, please continue to allow 207.54.136.106, 207.54.137.114, and 207.54.137.115 through your district's firewall. If your authentication service is hosted offsite by your ILS/LMS vendor, we recommend contacting them to confirm the updated IP addresses.

Additionally, in rare circumstances, some institutions filter outbound network access to specific IP addresses. If your institution does this, you will need to add 134.195.60.0/24 to your allow list to ensure your users can still access OverDrive from within your network after this change.

OverDrive will send a follow up message in October confirming that this migration is complete and it is safe to remove the legacy 207.54.136.0/23 IP addresses from your firewall. If you have any additional questions, please reach out to our team via the Authentication Support button under the Support tab in OverDrive Marketplace.