Many Libby loyalists out there who have to wait for their request to become available have discovered Hoopla. It has audiobooks, ebooks, and magazines just like Libby, and it also offers movies, music, and TV shows. There is no waitlist for items. Instead, the materials are immediately available and the Library pays for every checkout on a cost-per-circ model.
As Hoopla grows in popularity (up 49% in the last six months and 35% in the last month alone) the Library tries to make predictions on how much it will cost for the remainder of this year and next (throughout the 2023-24 biennial budget). While we pay for Libby with an annual consortium membership fee, we pay for Hoopla each month based on how many items our patrons check out.
Technology & Collections Manager Danielle Reynolds used ChatGPT to determine the following: given our current checkout and monthly payment data, how much we will pay in 2023 for Hoopla? It gave us upper and lower confidence intervals that land right around $14,385. Last year, we spent $9,798, so if ChatGPT's model is correct it would entail a 47% increase.
Back in the Libby world, members of the Washington Anytime consortium are currently in the process of voting on fees for next year. Membership will increase; the question is, by how much? If we vote to increase it substantially, we can decrease some of those wait times for popular materials. If we increase it just a little, wait times will be extended as the consortium will not be able to afford as many copies of digital materials.
As audiobooks, ebooks, and other digital materials soar in popularity, so do the prices. Libraries are scrambling to keep up with different pricing models and adjust their budgets. The science of budgeting continues to change as publishers and platforms switch up the way they make their content available.
Below: graphs depicting monthly circulation since launching Hoopla, average cost per checkout, and increase in spending since implementation.
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