Meeting Minutes for 03/09/2021

Niche Academy Demo (Tracy Furgason, Niche Academy)

Recording & Pricing

• Price increases every other year on August 1st and price increase this year will be significant. 
• Once you are a subscriber you are grandfathered into your pricing for as long as you stay with them. 
  • This means NO PRICE INCREASE - EVER.
• A brand new guarantee for new subscribers: if you implement Niche Academy widgets in your website and train your public-facing staff, Niche Academy guarantees an increase in usage of your eResources. If you are not satisfied with your increase, they will give you the second full year for free.
• Niche Academy contains a great deal of eResources tutorials from vendors like EBSCO, Novelist, ValueLine, and OverDrive to name a few.
• When a vendor changes information, Niche Academy will work with the developer to update its tutorials and push them out in real-time through widgets on your website. The other tutorials get reviewed every 6 months to a year.
• Niche Academy also contains tutorials by Next Chapter, a non-profit out of Georgia, on life skills.
• Other tutorials are from other Niche Academy subscribers created either for their patrons or staff that are shared on the Marketplace for anyone to use. If you create materials you decide if you want to share them with others in the community.
• Niche has a very powerful search tool for searching for words in the title or in the tutorial. You can also search for the most recently added tutorials.
• Niche Academy will embed the tutorials via widgets on your website either with you, for you, or show you how to do it. You can choose from seven different widget types. The widgets are branded with your library’s logo and colors. You will not see the Niche Academy name because they do not want to sell anything to your patrons. Your patrons will never leave your website to use the tutorials or have to go to social media or the database help page.
• When you have a subscription to Niche Academy a canvas is included for you to create your own content. 
• Storytime programming tutorials have copyright issues, so Niche Academy suggests that you take the link and put it behind your library’s authentication wall on your website. Patrons will have to authenticate like other paid subscriptions that you protect behind authentication. 
• You can see overall stat usage through your settings and drill down to what is being used as well as participation.
• You can also create and track training for onboarding, professional development, specific and ongoing training for staff.

Q & A

• Q: Can tutorials be shared on social media?
• A: Yes. Each tutorial has a unique URL to post on social media. Niche has a marketing photo file they can send to you.  
• Q: Is there a way to filter to just the tutorials that are shared?
• A: Everything in the Marketplace is available for you to use. There is a Facebook user group to ask people if they have created content relevant to your needs, and also to ask them to share that content.
• Q: Does it show ‘unique views’ for statistical information using custom dates?
• A: You can filter by specific dates, but it does not capture unique views. It just shows all the views for a particular date.
• Q: Do you develop tutorials on demand?
• A: Not on demand. People can suggest tutorials on the Facebook queue. Every tutorial suggestion will be created.
• Q: is the pricing all-in or opt-in?
• A: The pricing is opt-in. There is a discount for all-in pricing. Pricing includes onboarding, set up, unlimited training & support.

Staff Picks Curated Pika Browse Category (Ashley & Liz)

Recording

• There is a new browse category and list that anyone can use
• Liz and Ashley came up with a public user list
• The list is the source for a browse category that you can apply for your library called Marmot OverDrive Staff  Picks
• Here is the URL for the browse category - https://opac.marmot.org/MyAccount/MyList/55090
• Liz thanked everyone for their staff pick suggestions

Other Business

• OverDrive Magazine ISSN Update
  • Yuliya wanted to know if we had any updates about including the ISSN numbers in the OverDrive Marc records
  • Tammy responded that an enhancement request has been submitted to OverDrive to have this included 
  • OverDrive is going to look into including this information but we have not had any updates about the timeframe.
• Vendor Updates
  • Whenever Tammy gets a pricing list from a vendor she will also include a tab with the Vendor Questionnaire response.
  • We will have a Skillshare demo at the April meeting, and CuriosityStream at the May meeting. Tammy is also working on pricing with those vendors. The CuriosityStream rep will be setting up individual accounts for anyone who is interested. They will just need your email address. Tammy will send out an email requesting this information later in April.
  • Tammy is working with Newsbank and ValueLine to get pricing but not a demo
  • Tammy used this spreadsheet to find what the majority of libraries wanted as far as demos or pricing. If the group first voted for pricing but would like a demo we can look into getting a demo set up at a future meeting.

The next meeting is on April 13th at 1 p.m.