Digital Library

Hoopla's pay-per-read made the cost unsustainable

• It's expensive
• Hoopla charges up to $4 for every checkout
• To put it into perspective, it's like the equivalent of unfettered TV pay-per-view
• Hoopla and Libby/OverDrive are both costly, so we decided to focus on one — Libby — because we feel it's a better deal and product

Hoopla made it difficult to build a collection for you

• One book, one reader: With Hoopla, we bought short-term access for each title checked out; no sharing available and it's pay per single use
• One book, many readers: With Libby/OverDrive, we buy a long-term license and can share it over and over
• Hoopla determines which items come and go which makes making sustainable investments in a digital library difficult
• Hoopla has a lot of good materials and we understand why you love it, but Libby/Overdrive gives us more ownership of licenses and control over what we can add to the collection

Hoopla has quality control issues

• Hoopla has a huge selection, but with a catch: they accept enormous batches of titles with little regard to content:
  • Hoopla charges for books that are free in the public domain
  • Hoopla accepts summaries of other books
  • Hoopla accepts books designed to sound like popular novels but they aren't the ones you really want
• Libby/OverDrive consistently outperforms Hoopla in its offerings of popular and critically-acclaimed children's and Young Adult books
  • Among the long list of recent ALA award winners and nominees (Caldecott, Newbery, Printz, etc.), and Kansas' own William Allen White Award nominees, we are able to provide almost every one through Overdrive; Hoopla's offerings are quite a bit fewer in number.

With Libby/OverDrive, the library can now focus on one platform and build it to reflect what you want

• • You can help us build the collection by suggesting purchases
  • By focusing on a single platform, we'll free up money used on Hoopla to buy more copies of popular titles in Libby/OverDrive
  • A major perk with Hoopla is not having to wait for a title, however we'll now be able to get more titles on Libby and hopefully reduce wait time on holds

We don't believe in censorship, but do expect better curation of search results

• ARTICLE: Ebook Services Are Bringing Unhinged Conspiracy Books into Public Libraries

Your support is so valuable.

Please reach out to us if you have any thoughts or questions we can answer about these changes at:

collectiondevelopment@lawrence.lib.ks.us.

Thank you for understanding,
LPL Collection Development Team