Q. Does the library have any plans to increase access to Hoopla?

Unfortunately, the Public Library simply does not have the budget to increase the Hoopla borrowing amount. This is the reason we had to implement the cap in the first place.

Hoopla is paid for out of the library's materials budget. The materials budget pays for all library materials including anything on the shelf in the library branches, as well as digital resources such as eBooks, databases, and resources. Digital products like Hoopla are a huge expense for libraries nationally, and we have very few opportunities to control our costs. The library budgets slightly more than 10% of our materials budget for hoopla. We also continue to budget for physical movies, books and audiobooks; magazines and newspapers; research databases like Consumer Reports, eBooks and eAudiobooks on Libby/Overdrive, and the increasingly popular digital music, movie, ebook and audiobook formats that Hoopla offers. If you take a look at our eResources and Databases list on the library website, the majority of the databases here are also paid for out of our materials budget.

The library’s materials budget comes from city, county, and state bonds. There is a cap on how much money the city/county/state can bond for. Bond funding has to cover a wide variety of needs, including library materials. If we request an increase in bond funding, another need has to lose funding. Elected officials try to find the right balance but it’s very challenging to fund everything.

We work very hard to manage our materials budget prudently for the benefit of all of our customers, and we routinely weigh the costs and benefits of our choices to see whether we can improve how efficiently we use our resources. The reality is our $4.21 materials per capita spending is significantly lower than peer libraries. (Denver $8.47, Oklahoma City $8.63, Tucson/Pima County $7.14). We do our best to stretch our materials budget as far as we can, but our current materials funding level cannot provide the level of service we aspire to for our hoopla customers.

So with all of this in mind, the library implemented the daily borrowing cap in Hoopla in order to continue offering it to our patrons without going way over budget or pulling money from other library resources to be able to afford unrestricted Hoopla content.

Thank you.