Hi everyone, hello and welcome!
We are so happy that you could join us for today's webinar we have a wonderful forty five minute session, World Literary Tour: holiday edition
So what is the World Literary Tour?
The World Literary Tour is when OverDrive highlights a different destination every month with our recommended list in Marketplace where you can learn interesting facts about the languages, cultures, and literature around the world. So you'll travel with us with feature content every month and discover something new with each trip. We've had a lot of stops over this year, 2023, and we wanted to share where we traveled and put a spotlight on this really important content. So world language content is extremely valuable to your library communities and we're happy to help spotlight what is available.
This webinar is best suited for those that work with content selection or collection development in the public library, academic, professional, or K-12 space
I'd like to take a moment to introduce the speakers for this webinar. So my name is Emma Dwyer and I am a product trainer on OverDrive training team. I'm also a cohost of the professional book nerds podcast and I will be facilitating this session today
We have Fay she is a merchandising specialist on our publisher account services team where she creates and delivers marketing and sales campaigns for our library and school partners
Amy serves as an account manager on the publisher account services team. Her primary focus is to acquire content from Asia specific publishers including a range of titles in Chinese, Korean, Tamil, and Japanese and to build and maintain positive relationships with these publishers
Gryphon is an account manager on the publisher account services team. She specialized in the Australia and New Zealand regions and helps to bring visibility and recognition to this content
Racial joined OverDrive in 2012 after a decade of working and public libraries and museums. As the manager of the international collection development team she works with liberians across the globe helping to build and curate their digital collections
She holds an MLIS from Kent State and when she is not working she can be found reading books about music
Riding her Peloton and spending time with her family and beloved orange tabby cat. So we have a wonderful selection of speakers for you today
Now in our forty five minute session we have our experts, again Fay, Amy, Gryphon, and Rachel, they will share with you a look at the year in review for our 2023 World Literary Tour
Will discuss the importance of holidays around the world and share title highlights and fun facts from different regions
Then we'll do a quick overview of best practices for shopping and curating and cover some marketing tips and resources that you can refer back to
So I am going to hand things over to Fay to start us off with a summary of the World Literary Tour in 2023
So 2023 World Literary Tour, where did we stop? So our first stop on the tour was Ukraine. For this stop we wanted to highlight Ukranian publishers in literature. There is a lot of interest in Ukraine raise beyond the headlines so we thought what better place to learn more from Ukranian
What better place to learn more about the country that from Ukranian publishers. Our second stop was Guangzhou, China. It's a southern Chinese city at the meeting point of several rivers in the south China sea and is long known as a major trading center
It's also know for its Cantonese style in conjunction with our Lunar New Years sale
Stop three took us to Paris, the city that needs no introductions. Fun fact about France actually it holds the record for the most nobel peace prizes for literature at 16
Our next stop after that was back to Asia we visited Kyoto, Japan. It's a city that served as the setting for the book called The Tale of Genji. It's widely considered to be Japan's first novel and it's still a classic in Japanese literature. There is an active theater and literature culture there and that stop coincided with golden week. Which is a week that compares a series of national holiday in Japan
Our fifth stop was Bogotá, Columbia. That's a country in the literary world that is recognized largely for Gabriel García Márquez contributions but we also wanted to find other influence writers as well. My personal favorite from that stop was a book called Amazona. It was the bilingual graphic novel by young Indigenous women
A young indigenous women on a dark mission whose difficult trip home
Set her on another exploration to reclaim her family's land. After that we featured Melbourne, Australia. A city that one point had one of the first free public libraries in the world. And we are highlighted a bookstore called Cole's Book Arcade which
Tracked more than two million visitors including Mark Twain. For that stop we focused on aboriginal and first nations literature which you hear more about later on from Gryphon
After that looks like we returned to Europe and Milan and that stop highlighted renaissance classics and modern masterpieces including Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. Fun fact about Eco he had a thirty thousand volume, thirty thousand volume library at his Milan apartment. Would have loved to see that
Our next stop after that was Canada, our neighbor north here in northeast Ohio. We visited the city of Montreal. Montreal includes all kinds of literary gems thanks to its unique history. It's a city in a British Commonwealth country in North America where the official language is french. So lots of really great francophone and anglophone literature coming out of Montreal
Ninth stop is Singapore, an island country whose linguistic diversity that includes English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil. Also means we're getting a lot of really good literature. So we feature titles for that stop in all of those languages. After that we wnet to San Juan, Puerto Rico
Stop coincided with our US Hispanic heritage month sale. That was our first bring stop on the tour and included
Titles in English and Spanish highlighting the hispanic/latina experience in the US
After that we went back to China to Xi'an, China. One of China's four ancient capitals. The city's three thousand years old and it's known for being the beginning of the silk road and includes a collection of historical wonders. There's a myriad of
Book stores and literary societies. That city really has a stage set for contemporary work with so we wanted to feature that
And our last stop before the holiday collection that we're currently going to talk about today was Delhi. That's India's iconic capital city. That was also a multilingual stop with titles in Tamil, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, and Marathi. And that stop also coincided with Dawali and we feature titles about Dawali celebrations
All right so how do we choose locations for the world literary tour? Picking locations for tour stops as a collaborative effort between our publisher representatives, our merchandising team, and our digital content librarians. The cool thing about being here at OverDrive is that we have a really diverse staff with a subject matter expertise on various cultures of countries. One of my employees lived or one of my colleagues lived in Montreal for a long time. We have another colleague that selects Arabic content. I focus on Latin American and the Caribbean. So that's a small sampling but we have significant portions of the globe cover internally among our staff. What stop we choose can be determined by what libraries are asking for. Current events like the Ukranian stop,
Holidays, or simply just great content from our catalog that we want to feature. Some of our stops are two weeks and other stops, most of them, tend to be about a month long
And as far as like how we
How we work together and taking a deeper dive. But how we actually put the tour together. Once we've selected a city or country, thats really when the work begins. We research the location the same way you would when you're preparing to visit a new city or country. So that looks like YouTube. A lot of TikTok / BookTok which I personally love to see what people are reading locally. I look at lineups at book festivals, best seller lists, and what's in the news. And then see, do we have the content already? Are there new publishers to discover? Social media is super helpful when researching a country. And it's also all really helpful when you're researching a country when you have an author that everyone knows well. Like the Columbia example and García Márquez. There's so many amazing writers from that stop and
That would include the afformentioned book Amazona as well as a book called Fiebre Tropical which is a coming of age story about a teenager who relocated from Bogotá to Miami. So social media was what introduced me to that particular title and it was a perfect title to highlight for that stop
We also consult with our team at Kanopy, our partner Kanopy for films about which country or city we selected. And for those particular stops it's a real treat when some of the books have been made into films. Of course, the book is better. But it's always nice to see those title
Titles represented on film as well. So once we selected our titles those are grouped into featured list or collections by category. Every stop will typically have a J (juvenile) and YA (young adult) category. Adult fiction. non fiction. audiobooks, and a category about the history of the city or county. Some other fun categories can also include cuisine, music, special narrators (Australian narrators are really popular), featured publishers, and featured writers from that city. And I believe if Emma hasn't mentioned it already, we'll be sharing out of lists of some of the titles that were mentioning in today's webinar
After searching and working with our internal subject matter experts, the person selecting content from that stop will often work with publishers to help us focus on what to highlight. We want to make sure that were in the same page about world literary tour titles and promotions and the publishers know their catalog best. So we often connect with them via email or Zoom and discuss what the prioritize
Once our content is selected there is a ton of internal collaboration between our marketing, design, and merchandising department to facilitate the rest of the stop. I like to compare to when you're doing vacation prep. You know where you're going. You have an itinerary, you're packed. You know what your passport is, hopefully. And you're at the train station ready to go. So it just feels like a lot of prep work and then once the tour is published we basically start that process all over again. So the cool thing is that there's seven thousand plus world languages so there's plenty of information to spotlight. So this should be a feature that will be doing for
Quite, quite a while
Alright so holiday around the world
For North America, the season we're heading into is "winter" and holidays are a time of celebration and togetherness, partying, lots of food and celebrating. And there's a ton of holidays as we go into the season in succession. There's Hanukkah, there's people celebrating the winter solstice, there's Christmas, Kwanzaa, Three Kings Day, and then right after that the Lunar New Year. So in the US diasporic communities maintain a lot of the winter holiday traditions from their countries. And around the world winter holidays give us the opportunity to learn more about how their countries and cultures spend the seasons. So for this last stop we thought it would be a lot of fun to highlight this through literature for our final feature of the year. This was a ton of fun to organize. I think my favorite part about this stop was just a common thread across cultures. Whether it comes to like how we celebrate. Another interesting fun fact
Was the concept of hygge. Hygge is a Danish word that dates back to the eighteen hundred and describes the concept of taking time away from the daily rush of every day life to kind of nest and enjoy like a quieter time. Here in Cleveland that tends to be around 4:59 PM but really interesting
Titles about hygge that I found across all languages. So if you are looking to curate holiday titles for your world languages, holiday world language title for your collections, this holiday stop is a really great opportunity for more content. And also a lot of these titles can support underrepresented communities that are celebrating these holidays
During this time of year
All right so we've got our first highlight and that looks like that is a language that is Japanese for the first one. Thank You For the New Year is the translated name of that title. That is a really heartwarming title from our MediaDo partner. That one is about a girl named Aya who's preparing for the new year while her grandfather was recovered from an illness. This includes themes of togetherness and family, cooking, and new year traditions
And the next slide is ¡Alegría en el mundo! La Navidad en diferentes países or Joy to the World! Christmas in Different Countries. This is from Barefoot Books world of celebration series and its really just beautifully illustrated title about how different cultures celebrate Christmas. From Posadas in Mexico to Coptic Christian traditions in Egypt, Filipino traditions to Serbia, this title's really unique and I think its on all points. Diversity, travel, geographic, and cultural traditions
Alright, next we have The Way of the Sun. An Italian title about the symbolic meaning of this time of year. This title encourages readers to look inward and focuses on personal growth. It includes visualizations, meditations, and reflections that readers can do alone or in a group
And our next title
Again hygge, the Danish way to life happy. This one's in German. Again across all languages, hygge may appear one more time. In this book Louisa Thomsen Brits explains how the Danes have been able to do this for centries and how we can also incorporate
Elements of hygge and become a little bit happier in this in this season
Thank you Fay! Now before we hop into the rest of our regions highlights, I would like to ask everyone in attendance if you would like to open your chat. We want to know what seasonal holiday do you represent in your digital collections? So we would love to hear what can what your community celebrate and what content again is represented in your digital collections. So if you have some that you'd like to include or let us know, put that in chat. Chat is open for this webinar, so we would love to hear that. Now I am going to hand it back to Fay for our first batch of original highlights from Latin America
Thank you Emma. Alright so spanish titles from Latin America. So the first one, The Bakery Lady / La señora de la panadería. I really love this one this one. This one is about Mónica who spends her life around a bakery. Not just because she likes the sweets but because she also loves her grandparents and wants to take a turn baking herself. Her first real test comes as she and her beloved grandparents prepare for the coming January sixth holiday which is the Feast of the Three Kings or Día de los Reyes. That one is great for children ages five to seven and they can follow Mónica along on the quest to become the next bakery lady
And next
Is
Que Monton de Tamales! This one features Maria. Everyone is coming to Christmas dinner at her house. She and her mother are preparing by kneading the "masa" the dough to make the tamales. But when her mother takes off the ring, Maria tries it on and then is beside herself when she realizes, or thinks, that the ring has been kneaded into the tamales. It's a really fun audio title from Scholastic
And
Next one. Celebra Kwanzaa con Botitas y sus gatitos. This is from Grupo Santillana or Santillana USA a publisher that I really enjoyed. They have such beautifully illustrated titles and have amazing content. This one is about an African America family that gets together to celebrate Kwanzaa but the celebration is spoiled because their beloved pet cat is missing. So as the family sets off on a quest to find the cat, the reader learns about the seven values celebrated in Kwanzaa in a really simple and entertaining way for kids ages five through seven or grades K through three. So that would be eight actually. Santillana also has really, has a ton of titles about Christmas, Three Kings Day, Thanksgiving, MLK, Día de Los Muertos, Halloween. Theres a ton of stuff so cannot
Say enough about them
And this is another one from them, Celebrate Hanukkah with Bubbe. It's Hanukkah and three Jewish kids play with the dreidel, eat Bubbe's which is grandma in Yiddish, and yes they ate delicious latkes as part of the celebration, and learn about generosity and ways that amuse the reader. And again just another great title from Santillana
The last one
This is the last hygge reference, I promise. Hygge Home, how to make your home a happy place. This is from Editorial Planeta and another title in Spanish about hygge. Just a testament to the popularity of this concept and how it's gone global
Thank you Fay and now over to Amy for some top picks!
Hi, this holiday season we welcome you to dive into
The wonderful world of Harry Potter and celebrate the magic and togetherness with your family
J.K. Rowling's series isn't just a classic, it takes you away to a world of winter magic, filled with heartwarming moments of love and friendship. It has been a favorite among our Korean titles
Adding to the excitement, we are thrilled to announce that our Mandarin Harry Potter audiobook
It's set to release next February
Just in time for Chinese New Year. Very exciting
Next
After exploring the magical world of Harry Potter
Let's bring a little global charm to your kitchen
We've got this amazing cook book
That was released not a long time ago which is in traditional Chinese
It's a delightful journey into breakfast traditions from around the world
Imagine starting your day with flavors from different corners of the globe. Each recipe comes with detailed nutritional info and easy to follow instructions catering to different dietary needs
Spice up your breakfast table with this beautiful and insightful guide
Next slide
If you like mystery we have a great pick in Japanese. This title is so engaging that the readers often say, "Once you start, you can't stop." It's really popular with a related YouTube video getting over fifteen million views and a movie adoption coming in spiring 2024. The story is about a mystery house in Tokyo with a strange design leading to discovers about its past and the disappearance of its former residents
Combining real estate drama with a suspenseful plot, this book is a
Unique addition to any collection
For simplified Chinese titles, I'd like to introduce a well loved children's book series, featuring pinyin, popular in Chinese markets. It was recommended by many elementary schools with over ten million copies sold
And they feature a boy mouse and girl cat who share heartwarming and friendly
Adventures
Simple, engaging, and filled with life lessons
Life lessons these stories are a hit among kids. The author Zhou Rui's book's have won numerous awards and are a staple in Chinese literature in China
We highly recommend adding this
Series to school libraries. It's a wonderful way for students to explore new cultures and experiences during this holiday season
And now let's take a delightful little journey through some amazing Asian holiday with more selections of children's books
First one, this is a fun book that dives into Diwali
India's famous Festival of Lights. Diwali's all about the celebrating light winning over dark,
Good over evil, and of course enjoying family time with lots of lights and fireworks. The author brings the festival to life with hilarious jokes and engaging stories. It's a great way for kids to learn about Diwali's traditions and culture, whether they're new to the festival or
Already familiar with it
Sorry it should be the
Previous slide
From the celebrations of Diwali in India, let's now journey to another fascinating cultural experience with a special 24-volume Chinese book series. It follow the Bell family as they travel across twenty four different Chinese cities and villages. Each book is based on one of China's twenty four solar terms - you know, that special calendar that divides the year into twenty four parts based on the sun's position. These books are a fantastic mix of local culture, yummy food, history, and landscapes
This book focuses on the Winter Solstice, a time when people traditionally enjoy dumplings at home. It's one of the 24 volumes.
They are perfect for school libraries, family reading, and kids who love different cultures
The next slide
And lastly we turn to a charming picture book for kids aged five to seven
From five to seven celebrating the Korean Lunar New Year
It highlights the special role of grandmas - the superheros of our families. With colorful illustrations, it shows the families
Honoring ancestors, kids in traditional Korean clothes receiving lucky money
And everyone enjoying rice cake soup for good luck
It's a beautiful glimpse into this age-old tradition
Important for families, including those who have migrated. It's quite similar to the Chinese Lunar New Year, which is another great time for us to showcase our fantastic Chinese titles
Thank you Amy and next we're hopping over to Australia
In summer it's
Sorry it's summer in Australia and New Zealand and while everyone picks up beach reads and barbeque's prawns for Christmas, I want to reflect on some of their seller titles for this year
So first a couple stand out award winners
This is Runt by Craig Silvey and it on the CBCA book of the year award for younger readers. So this is a middle grade title
In the rural Australian town of Upson Downs little Annie and her stay dog Runt show warmth and determination to save their family farm
It's a great book for international collections to show that the bond between kids and dog is the same all around the world
Beautifully illustrated and a wide spread favorite this year
Similarly universal but in a far more adult way is The Jaguar by Sarah Holland-Batt
This rich poetry collection is an ode to the author's father as he suffered with Parkinson's disease
It examines what it means to be immortal, to see one self changed by grief in love
It won the Stella prize which is Australia's award for women writers. Which as a very high esteem and I couldn't recommend it more
Alright and winner of the biggest literary word in Australia the year, the Miles Franklin. Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens is a love letter to story telling
It's a nursing home in suburb of Sydney which is the center of this inner generational novel about race, family secrets, and triumphs
Readers say that they've never read anything like it and that it leaves a lasting impression. And the author herself said that it felt very daring to put it out. So I would recommend it. It is a challenge but I think it's worth while
Alright and on to New Zealand which is home of the Māori people whose culture and language are cherished and celebrate in numerous holidays
First is Matariki which is the Māori New Year
Which marks the reappearance of the Matariki star cluster. It is a time for honoring with dead and one's ancestors
The books seen here are from Culturalhubb on the left and Allen & Unwin on the right
It's aimed to show the special importance of the holiday and the ways in which it's celebrate
Also of great importance, if we can move to the next slide
Especially in recent weeks, as the New Zealand government is facing division over Māori representation in politics
Is Waitangi Day which commerates the signing of the treaty of Waitangi
This is the founding document of the country
Providing the framework for the relationship between the crown and the indigenous people of New Zealand
The titles highlighted here are essential to the education about the document. So first on the left, A Bloody Difficult Subject
Is the story of Ruth Ross who is published a public historial whose research is key to the modern understanding of the treat and the way that it's interpreted in modern days
Then on the right for children is another title from Culturalhubb which is a wonderful publisher based out of Auckland
This title, We Are One, is as meant to show the spirit of Waitangi presented in three languages
English, Māori and New Zealand sign language
I couldn't recommend these more especially in the current climate in New Zealand. It's important to be educated and to learn about the wonderful culture of the Māori people
Thank you so much. And sorry, over to Rachel. Thanks Emma. Sorry, I'm just very excited to be here. Hi everyone! So after you get back from your armchair trip I'm sure you'll want to unpack all your great new content and share your new knowledge with your community. OverDrive has some powerful, easy to manage merchandising tools you can utilize to promote your world literary content
Next slide please
First is curating collections
Automation options make it seamless to curate collections based on language, BISAC code, publisher, format, and more directly in your Marketplace accounts
Try setting up an automated list of all your German magazines or maybe make a list of all you Spanish language titles for kids and teens. And there's also a fiction / world literature BISAC heading with over seventy country and regions specific codes you can utilize as well in automation
You can also hand pick titles to showcase holiday, celebrations, and other regional spotlights
Holiday season is the perfect time to be inclusive and highlight content for all your community members
We have some resources available to help help you walk through the curation process if you're new to it. We'll share those soon in the chat
You can also contact your digital content librarian for additional assistance. We have experts on staff here and OverDrive with multiple language skills who are always happy to assist
Next slide please
Next I want to talk about rooms and guides. So called rooms on your OverDrive powered websites and guides in Libby, these are a powerful tool you can utilize to highlight world literary content. Setting up a guide has its advantages over simply creating a collection as you can provide a good location where users can dive in deeper
The collections within a room can be customized in adding with automated lists as well as hand-picked curated lists
Many libraries around the world have had great success setting up community language rooms that encompass all their world languages. You could also create guides for specific regions. Like an Australian guide or perhaps and Indigenous stories guide
Next slide please
Language specific guides offer a seamless experience both in terms of content and the languages. If your device is set to Spanish and you go to your Spanish room, you see Spanish navigation. Making everything seamless for the user with no additional clicks needed. So it's really nice, inclusive way to promote various languages. You can set up a Chinese room, a Malay room or Tamil. There's really no limit to how many of these
You can provide for your users and your library patrons depending on the size and strength of your collection. So that's usually what we recommend. Use the strength and diversity of your collection to work out what makes sense for a curated list and what could live better in a room
You can contact your OverDrive team if you're interested in setting up an you guide. We're happy to advice and help you make the most of these tools to ensure that your entire community
Has quick and easy access to your collection
And that's all from me. I'll pass it back to Emma. Thanks so much and happy holiday!
Thank you Rachel for those really helpful tips on how to curate all of this wonderful world language content. Now onto the marketing. So once you've gone through the process of finding these titles, hopefully some that Fay, Amy and Gryphon have highlighted, will make it into your collection if they haven't already. But once you've purchased them, and then you've gone through the steps of curating them like Rachel suggested, we want to make sure that you market them to your community. So it's really important that your library patrons know that you offer this amazing world languages content. So we would really recommend that you utilize all of the free resources and tools that OverDrive has created on our Resource Center. So that is resources.overdrive.com. We have a full section for marketing and we have this for
Libraries, for our K-12 partners, and our international partners. So if you go to that resource center there will be a section for you. And then navigate to the marketing and outreach where you can find all of our trending marketing kits. So you'll see on screen here we have a few examples. We also have things like social media graphics that you can easily repost on your library socials. We have the option to customize marketing graphics. So if you have access to tools like Canva you can take any of these premade items and customize them for your library to get the word out that you have these amazing world languages in your collection. Again we recommend you check out resources.overdrive.com to market those items.
Now we have reached nearly the end of our session and we want to make sure that we recap and go over next steps with you. So it is important that you shop the world language content using those recommended lists and things that are highlighted from our World Literary Tour. You can see all of those things directly in OverDrive Marketplace. But also make sure to shop titles from today's session using that link that we've posted in chat
Then once you've done all of your shopping, make sure you're curating into collections for your community. So turn those lists into rooms or guides. Or make sure you have a curated list like Rachel said of your German magazines, of your world language holiday content. So whatever works for your community make sure that they have a spotlighted list or a room or a guide
Then make sure that you're marketing that content. Let at your library patrons know on social media that those books are available to them. And then contact your OverDrive team. So if you have any questions about any of these things. Whether it's shopping, curate,
Or marketing, or just where to start with all of this, you can reach out to your OverDrive team. They're happy to advise you. You can always find their contact information by logging into Marketplace. If you click on the Support tab you will see on the right hand side of that support tab your Account Manager, your Product Support Specialists and your Digital Content Librarian. And their contact information. They are your best OverDrive resource
Now we would like you to mark your calendars. We have some additional upcoming webinars that may be of interest to you. So first up, OverDrive and Library Journal present "Wrap up 2023 with great titles (and great savings!)" That is tomorrow, Wednesday Dec. 6th at 2:00 PM where you will join our panel of experts in a round table discussion where they share favorite titles from the sale. Showcase Kanopy streaming titles that you won't want to miss. And feature fourth coming titles, content trends, and more. So if you're in for holiday content sale content, make sure you check out the OverDrive and Library Journal session tomorrow at 2:00 PM eastern. Then we have Introduction to Marketplace. This is our thirty minute overview of OverDrive Marketplace, your hub for digital content. You can catch this session on Wednesday, Dec. 13th at 2:00 PM eastern
And lastly save the date for January we have our getting started with Libby webinar. This is our first training webinar of 2024 if you can believe it. This session it will be great for anyone that is new to the Libby up or anyone who would like a refresher of those latest updates. You can join us for this 60 minute dive it all things Libby on Thursday, January 18th at 2:00 PM. To learn more you can scan the qr code
On screen. You can visit OverDrive's resource center under staff training, or you can click on the links in the pdf that you'll receive tomorrow to register for these sessions
With that I would like to say thank you for joining us and thank you to our speakers
Fay, Amy, Gryphon, and Rachel! And to our OverDrive Q&A support Lauren, Tonya, and Holly. Now as a reminder for all of our OverDrive training webinars we are recording this session and you will receive an email from zoom tomorrow that includes a link to this recording and a pdf of the presentation
At this time Lauren is going to chat out a link to our certificate of attendance. That you may keep for your records. As well when you leave the zoom weapon are today a survey will display on the screen as you close out. We would love to hear your feedback on the session. And again keep an eye out for a follow up email from zoom around this time tomorrow with everything that you'll need to reference back to you from this session. Thank you so much and have a wonderful rest of your day! If you have any questions feel free to ask them in the zoom Q&A. And we will remain on air to answer any follow up questions. At this time this is where we will end the audio and visual portion of our session. Have a great day and happy reading!