If you follow Rutherford County Library on social media, you may know that we recently had to make the choice between two digital book apps: Libby and Hoopla. In the end, the fiscally prudent solution was to keep the former and drop the latter. Understandably, this was met with some disappointment by fans of Hoopla–a feeling that we share. Since the Rutherford County Library is an open and transparent institution, we wanted to take some time to lay out the reasons for our choice.
Though on the surface the two apps may seem very similar, there are some key differences in the way RCLS uses and pays for them. You may have noticed that Hoopla tends to be more on-demand resembling a streaming service you might have at home–like Netflix or Hulu but with movies, tv shows, books, comics, and magazines. On the other hand, Libby functions more like a traditional library–with waitlists and checkouts. Why does this matter? The cost for the library to provide patrons with Libby is per book license. The price of these licenses varies but they are usually good for a certain period of time or a specific number of checkouts. The cost for Hoopla? Somewhere between .99 cents to 3.99 cents PER CHECKOUT.
On top of the disparity in cost, Libby is a far more popular platform for RLCS than Hoopla. In this last fiscal year Hoopla circulated a little over 84,000 items. This may sound like a lot until you realize that Libby circulated more than 541,000 items in the same period.
Cost and popularity aside, Libby has one other, major advantage over Hoopla. Along with the books RCLS licenses, we have access to an archive of thousands more through the Regional Library system. Hoopla has no such sharing agreement. So not only does Libby represent more bang for the library’s buck, it gives our patrons access to an even wider world of books at little cost to RCLS.
In the end, despite the media variety and ease of Hoopla, Libby represents a better value to our patrons. It’s a cheaper platform that is already used by more people. As much as we would prefer to keep both, that was not a fiscally responsible option. If you are a fan of Hoopla please know we are disappointed it is going as well, but it was a choice we were forced to make by increasing costs and level funding. This situation is a good reminder that, if you like a service provided by the library, the money to pay for it has to come from somewhere. If you want robust library services, remind your local politicians that the library needs robust funding.