For consortia and member libraries, “innovation” isn’t a buzzword. It’s a requirement.
As digital demand grows and discovery environments become more sophisticated, libraries need platforms that evolve with them. Hoopla continues to meet that challenge head-on.
Over the past year, we’ve collaborated on several forward-thinking enhancements designed to strengthen patron engagement, simplify administrative workflows, and improve cost efficiency across consortium environments.
Several recent Hoopla innovations showcase our commitment to building tools that work better for every type of library.
1. Custom Carousels: Personalized Discovery at Scale
Discovery remains one of the biggest challenges for digital collections.
Hoopla’s new custom carousels give libraries large and small the power to curate content in a way that reflects their unique communities. These carousels allow libraries to highlight popular titles and local events, celebrate cultural moments, promote community initiatives, or simply spotlight underused content, all while mixing formats and license types for a dynamic browsing experience.
Carousels can also be date-driven, aligning with programming cycles or seasonal promotions, and they appear on both homepages and format-specific pages. Private collections extend this flexibility further by letting libraries surface curated themes like book club picks or local author highlights directly within the Hoopla app.
For consortia, this means every member library can reflect its own identity while still benefiting from shared content investments. It’s personalization without additional maintenance burden.
2. Instant Bundles: Budget-Smart Flexibility for High-Demand Titles
As digital circulation grows, cost management becomes increasingly critical.
Hoopla Instant Bundles were created in direct response to library feedback requesting more predictable budgeting without sacrificing patron access. Instant Bundles allow libraries to pre-purchase sets of Hoopla Instant circulations on popular titles, such as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone or The Hunger Games, that patrons can use simultaneously.
This model reduces holds, increases satisfaction, and offers cost advantages once circulation-savings thresholds are met. Libraries also receive daily reporting on usage, savings, and utilization, enabling informed decision making.
Consortia especially benefit from Instant Bundles as they help balance demand across multiple member libraries and ensure high-interest titles are available to many patrons at once, without unpredictable spikes in spending.
3. Enhanced Integration Features: Breakthroughs for Consortia
Hoopla works closely with our partners to continuously improve how libraries and patrons discover and access digital content. Through ongoing collaboration with third-party discovery and integration services, Hoopla supports a flexible, evolving ecosystem designed to meet the needs of libraries of all sizes.
As an example, the latest API Flex enhancement for Aspen Discovery represents a major milestone for consortium discovery environments. With the addition of new Hoopla API endpoints, each member library can now maintain its own circulation rules, Hoopla Flex availability, and display settings, all within a single shared Aspen instance.
This enhancement delivers several critical improvements:
- Member-library control over how Hoopla content is displayed.
- Automatic management of Flex records, removing the need for manual staff intervention.
- Unified patron experience, allowing users to discover, borrow, and track both Instant and Flex titles alongside physical items.
- Administrative visibility, giving consortium leaders insight into all member libraries’ configuration settings.
The update requires no downtime, and consortia with test servers can even preview the functionality in a safe staging environment before going live.
This enhancement not only streamlines operations but ensures every member library’s digital collection strategy is accurately represented within the discovery layer, something consortia have long needed.
Additionally, Innovative part of Clarivate has introduced an enhancement for consortium libraries using Vega Discover, offering more precise control over Hoopla content visibility. With a simple backend setting, consortia can now suppress Hoopla records from the main shared catalog site, ensuring that titles are only accessible to patrons of member libraries with Hoopla for a more accurate experience.
Innovation with Purpose
At Hoopla, our goal is simple: to help libraries serve their communities with tools that are intuitive, affordable, and future-ready.
Custom Carousels strengthen engagement. Instant Bundles protect budgets while expanding access. Enhanced API Flex integration brings unprecedented control and automation to consortium discovery systems. And revised product details pages make selection simpler, clearer, and more intuitive than ever.
Together, these innovations reflect a platform that evolves in partnership with libraries, not apart from them. As demand grows and digital ecosystems shift, Hoopla remains committed to delivering features that scale, simplify, and inspire.
If your consortium is ready to take advantage of these improvements, our team is here to support every step—because innovation works best when it works for everyone.
