Starting in May, the Fargo Public Library is changing the Hoopla service by limiting checkouts to four per month per cardholder and removing some more expensive items from Hoopla’s content offerings list.
“Since adding it in 2017, the Fargo Public Library has continued to adjust our offerings from Hoopla in order to ensure that we are able to continue to provide access, and at the same time meet our budgetary responsibilities. The Fargo Public Library will continue to seek additional funding to meet the community’s demand for digital content,” said Library Director Tim Dirks.
What are the new changes for Hoopla at the Fargo Public Library?
Starting May 1, the Fargo Public Library is lowering available monthly checkouts from six to four per month, and also removing titles that cost $2.89 or more per checkout. Items above this cost level account for:
• 43% of expenditures in Hoopla in 2024.
• 31% of Hoopla checkouts in 2024.
• 27% of all unique items checked out through Hoopla in 2024.
Based on current checkout trends, we believe this will keep us within our budgeted amount.
How much does Hoopla cost?
Titles in Hoopla are priced by publishers and vary in price from less than $1 up to $3.99 per checkout. Most popular items fall between $2 and $3 per checkout. The library’s average cost per checkout in Hoopla since the beginning of 2024 is $2.36.
How does Hoopla work?
To fully understand the reason for the new limits, it is important to know how Hoopla works. When the library purchases a physical item or licenses a digital title through a service like Libby, the item is usually offered on the traditional “one copy, one user” model, meaning that the library can offer that title to one user at a time. The item can then go to the next user once the item is returned.
Hoopla operates on a different “cost-per-use” model where all items are always available with no waiting, and the library pays a fee each time an item is checked out. This is convenient for patrons since there are no holds and items are always available; however, both usage and the average cost per checkout have been rising in recent years. These two factors are making it difficult to keep Hoopla cost effective and within the library’s budget.
What about other services?
We want to emphasize that Libby and Kanopy are not impacted by these changes to Hoopla. No rules are changing for those services. We regularly evaluate each format’s cost and usage to meet patron needs, and Libby continues to be our most popular and cost effective digital platform.
We hope this post helps explain some of the reasons for the new limits on Hoopla. Thank you for your support of the Fargo Public Library. If you have questions about the new Hoopla limits, please contact us at 701.241.1492 or email reference@fargolibrary.org.