hoopla Digital 12+

I have been using Hoopla for a little over two years now, to listen to audio books. In the beginning, it was frustrating, because the stories would quit once you got to the end of a streamed part. As time passed, they kept making updates to the sight, which cured the interruptions. Then they added more content to stream, besides the audio books, movies and music. I still mostly use the audio book feature. My son and I enjoy listening. The only thing I hope they consider changing is to decrease the price of the service that they charge libraries. I am lucky that the township that I work for lets school district employees have a library card. The library system in the community that I live in decided that Hoopla was too expensive for the amount of people that actually use the service and discontinued Hoopla. This was much to the disappointment and frustration of the patrons who use it. They kept limiting the number of collective borrows allowed to 4 in a month. Then, even that became too expensive so they made the decision not to carry it any longer. They suggested to the patrons to use Libby instead. I kept pointing out that you have to wait up to 6 months to listen to a new or requested book. I wonder now how long it will be before the my work library system has to cut it as well. Until then, I will continue to let my students and their families know what Hoopla is and how to get it from the library.

I really think I could like this app of hoopla if you would fix a few problems. I use the Libby app and really like it. So I thought I would try hoopla as a second choice to Libby since they’re both related to the library. The first problem is I like to read my books with the two column choice. So when I select that option on hoopla, it duplicates a lot of sentences and paragraphs. And that happens too often for me. Then comes the bookmark, which is laughable. Sometimes the bookmark will take you to where you’re supposed to be and sometimes it won’t. You need to set up your bookmarks like Libby does. So that your bookmark tab is showing the whole time you are reading that page so it reminds you to disable the tab, while you are reading. the way you have it set up is very awkward. Another problem is that when you quit reading for a while during the day, or power down for the day, a lot of times when you go back to read, you have to start from the very beginning, instead of taking you right to your place that you left off. Another situation I ran into , when you go to the area where you read a few paragraphs of what a book is about so you’ll know whether you want to choose that book or not. A lot of the words are running together. Is there no proofreading? like I said, in the beginning, I think I could really like this app of hoopla, but the website itself needs quite a bit of work.

I am OBSESSED. I am a public library director so the I have helped the library make this possible for our community. If your library doesn’t offer it, ask!
Unlike other providers of digital content, though also amazing in their own right, Hoopla offers ebooks, audio books, comics, tv, music, and movies. All items in their catalog are instantly available- no wait! How many check outs a month is set by your library as its free to the user and paid for by the library but its a great compliment to other digital platforms! The app’s interface is easy to use and they are constantly improving it. You can download ebooks and audio books to your device for the 21 day check out so you can listen even when you cannot stream. If the item “falls off” after your checkout (because 50 hour audio books are a thing), you can re-borrow and it picks back up where you left off! You don’t have to start over. There are even more benefits I haven’t mentioned!
And from the backend as a director, working with the staff at MidWest Tape is awesome; quick to answer questions & reach out for support. It’s easy to access your portal and check stats, make changes to checkout limits and controls, and review spending.
I can’t say enough nor can my patrons!! We love it! CHECK IT OUT!