WiLS

Oct 2

Participate in WiLS’ 2020 Public Library Strategic Planning Cohort

Need a strategic plan on a limited budget? Want to learn more about the process of creating a strategic plan with your peers? We are now seeking participants for our 2020 Strategic Planning Cohort for Small Public Libraries! Read more

Oct 1

Taco Tuesday for December 2019

Join us for the next Taco Tuesday on December 3rd, 2019, from 11:30 am – 12:30 pm and hear vendor presentations from World Trade Press, Backstage Library Works, Primal Pictures, and EBSCO! Read more

Sep 18

WiLS September 2019 Member Interview: Kristen Anderson, Winding Rivers Library System

One of our greatest joys at WiLS is hearing our members tell the stories of the big and important work they are doing – interesting new projects or initiatives, or even interesting and new approaches to old projects. And, in addition to hearing about it, it makes us even happier when we can share those stories with other members. Each month, WiLS is proud to feature an interview with one of our library members.

This month, we interview Kristen Anderson, Director of the Winding Rivers Library System.

Social Explorer Demo Webinar – UPDATE

On September 9th, WiLS’ newest vendor partner, Social Explorer provided a free demo of their product. A link to the recorded session is below.

Social Explorer provides quick and easy access to current and historical census data and demographic information. The easy-to-use web interface lets users create maps and reports to illustrate, analyze, and understand demography and social change. Your social science instructors can develop academic activities that brings real-world data into the classroom.

Session Recording Link

Learn more about Social Explorer by reading this flyer. Contact Jeff Brunner () for trial and price quote information.

Aug 21

WiLS 2019 Ideas to Action Fund Recipients Announced

We are excited to announce these recipients of WILS 2019 Ideas to Action Funds!

Curating Community Digital Collections: Final Cohort Update

Where has the time gone? It’s August and the Recollection Wisconsin consortium is winding down Curating Community Digital Collections (CCDC) and helping our year two (and final) cohort wrap up their digital preservation projects. Read more

Jul 19

New WiLS Vendor Partner: Pressbooks

WiLS is excited to announce a new partnership with Pressbooks, bringing our cooperative purchasing service members a 30% discount on PressbooksEDU Silver networks!

PressbooksEDU provides your institution’s open educational resource production program with:

Easy-to-use software on which to produce your institution’s open resources
A way to distribute open textbooks to students and learners and showcase your institution’s open resource library
The tools to create a variety of book formats that learners can access in their preferred modalities, including mobile and offline access and interoperable formats
Access to features like H5P (for quizzes), MathJax, QuickLaTeX, TablePress, and others that enable instructors and instructional designers to build interactivity into each book
The cloning tool, that lets you clone and adapt any public, openly licensed book on any Pressbooks network instantly onto your own network
Ability to view usage data on your network through integration with Google Analytics
Premium technical support for your designated support contacts and extensive ongoing training for both support contacts and users across your institution
And more!

For more information about what’s available with a PressbooksEDU Silver plan, visit https://pressbooks.com/educational-institutions/. To order, contact and let them know you are a WiLS cooperative purchasing member to receive your discount!

Questions? Contact us at .

Jul 18

WiLS July 2019 Staff Interview: Stef Morrill, WiLS Director

You may have noticed that WiLS has some new faces among its staff. We are excited to grow our skills and improve our services by bringing new members into our team while also leveraging the experience and strengths that our existing team contributes. In the coming months, we will be sharing a little more about WiLS staff members, both new and experienced, in their own words.

This month, we talk with WiLS’ fearless leader and Director, Stef Morrill.

October Taco Tuesday Potluck Featuring LibGuides

This event has already occurred! You can watch the recording here.
Read more

Jul 18

September 2019 Taco Tuesday with TrueSerials, FactCite, Tales2Go, and Pressbooks

This event has already happened but you can visit all the recordings here!

Join us for the September 2019 Taco Tuesday on August 6th at 11:30 am to see short demonstrations from WiLS vendor partners on valuable products and services! This month we’ll feature the following vendors:

11:30-11:45 TrueSerials
11:45-12:00 FactCite
12:00-12:15 Tales2Go – Join Gwen Mak and Lysa Kenney to learn about how Tales2go, a subscription audio book service for K12 schools can help you add a cost-effective listening component to your students’ reading instruction. The service provides instant, unlimited and simultaneous access to over 9,100 high-interest audiobook titles from leading publishers to use on desktops, laptops and mobile devices in the classroom and beyond. Tales2go is used in a growing number of schools and districts across the U.S., including Los Angeles USD, Berkeley USD, and Heartland AEA.

12:15-12:30 PressbooksEDU – Is your institution supporting the creation or remixing of open educational resources (OER)? Learn about PressbooksEDU (https://pressbooks.com/educational-institutions/), an easy-to-use book formatting platform built with Open Educational Resources in mind that allows educators and faculty authors to easily create and remix open educational resources (OER) and open textbooks (without design staff), and enables universities to showcase the collection of OER and other publications produced by their institution.

The presentations will be recorded and shared as well.

Register to attend or read more about our Taco Tuesday programs.