If you are an avid Hoopla user you might have experienced some difficulties in the past few weeks. Attempting to check something out has probably resulted in the following message:

Many of you have called the library wondering what is going on. Be assured that there is nothing wrong with your account if you are getting this message. It is definitely a library wide problem. 

The problem arises from the Hoopla lending model. It is easiest if you think of Hoopla as a pay-per-view model of borrowing materials. Every checkout from Hoopla costs a certain amount ranging from $.39 to $3.99. The library pays that amount each time an item is checked out. 

The library has a set budget of $6,000 a month for Hoopla. Hoopla takes that amount and divides it by the number of days in a month and that is how much we are allowed to spend each day. For instance, September has 30 days so the daily budget is $200. Once that budget limit is reached no more checkout can occur that day. 

You may think that $200 a day is a lot of money. So why are we running out before noon each day? The majority of our Hoopla checkouts are adult audiobooks and those are the most expensive items on Hoopla. The average cost for adult audiobooks is $2.78, which if you do the math means that only 72 items can be checked out at that cost each day. 

We started reaching our daily caps on August 24th. Prior to that we were overspending our monthly budget, but we had sent Hoopla extra funds. We received an allotment of funds in the amount of $35,000 from the State’s Athletes and Entertainers tax in December 2022. We sent that entire amount to Hoopla to pad our budget. Unfortunately, those funds ran out in August and we are now reliant on only our budgeted amount. 

What can you do? If you are a dedicated Hoopla user and don’t want to switch to another platform you just need to check out materials very early in the day. The reset happens at midnight each day and we generally run out of funds by noon. So the early bird truly does get the worm as far as Hoopla is concerned. Your other option is to move to our Libby platform instead of Hoopla. Libby has a different lending model, which has its own set of issues, but it does not reach budget caps like Hoopla does. Hoopla and Libby do have different materials so you may not be able to find the same things on Libby, but you may find something comparable. Library staff would be happy to help you set up a Libby account if you are interested.