Is it Time to Think Differently About Digital?

For patrons, digital products offer convenience, accessibility, and affordability. With just a few clicks, consumers can access a vast library of content without leaving their homes. But it’s not always easy to ensure that budget dollars are being spent on the content your patrons want.

Digital Media Dominates Circulation

As the demand for digital content grows, libraries find themselves trying to balance their materials budget to meet patron expectations. Digital audiobooks, for example, as with most digital library formats, skew higher by the day. Digital audiobooks now account for 70% of adult and 56% of youth audio circulation in libraries.*

And libraries are spending more to accommodate that increase, reporting a 9.2% year-over-year increase in spending on digital audio materials for adult collections alone.*

…But Licenses Aren’t Being Fully Utilized

Despite the growing popularity of digital audiobooks, some recent findings show that the standard approach to offering the format may not truly be delivering what patrons are looking for:

Active holds on licenses more than doubled year over year.*

Less than 50% of pre-paid one copy/one user borrows were utilized, meaning that more than half went unused and cannot be recovered.**

30% of licenses were borrowed 10 or fewer times by patrons.^

11% of the titles weren’t borrowed at all.^

Let’s Talk About How We Can Help

Finding a balance between one copy/one user and pay per use models is a great place to start meeting patron demand and satisfaction—and we can help you find the balance that’s right for your library. It’s all about thinking differently and managing budget to demand. We’ve got some suggestions on ways Hoopla can assist.

Share this story and let’s work together. Download our infographic and start thinking differently about digital!