You may have logged into Hoopla recently only to be met with this message:
The collective daily borrow limit set by your library has been reached and will reset at midnight. Please browse and add titles to favorites so you can easily access them after midnight.
So what does this message mean? First, nothing is wrong with your account. You haven't reached your individual checkout limit. Instead, the library has reached its limit for the day.
You might be wondering how a library could have a limit on digital items. The library pays a specific amount to Hoopla each month, and then Hoopla takes that monthly payment and divides it by the number of days in that month. Each time someone checks out an Instant item through Hoopla, it costs something. How much it costs depends on the item. If enough people check out enough items in one day, they use up the money the library has available for that day, and no one else can check anything out until the next day. Even if you haven't checked anything out yet that day, you will still see this message.
If you are trying to check something out from Hoopla and receive this message, you can add it to your favorites and wait until the limit resets to check it out. You can also try finding a Flex title instead. Flex titles work a little differently than Instant titles. Unlike Instant titles, they work similarly to print books you check out from a branch - sometimes they are available right away, and sometimes you might have to put them on hold.
You can tell if an item is an Instant or a Flex by the symbol above the cover image. A lightning bolt means Instant and two arrows in a circle means Flex. Flex Titles will also say either Available or Wait List.
Since Flex titles are purchased separately from the general Hoopla subscription, they are not subject to the daily limit like Instant titles are. You can have 15 Flex titles checked out at one time. If you return one of your Flex titles, you can immediately get a new one.
"Why doesn't the library just increase the money it gives to Hoopla so the daily limit will go up?" you might be wondering. We would love to do that, but it would require rearranging our budget. We would have to take money from another part of the library to pay for that. Just like when you need more money for one part of your budget at home, so you have to put less money toward something else, if we need to add more money to Hoopla, one of our other services would have to be trimmed down. We might have to put less money toward print books in our branches, programs, or staff to help serve you.
Because of the cost of Hoopla and ebooks, the money also wouldn't be used as effectively, either. If we buy a print book for one of our branches, we might pay $8 for that book, and it can be checked out dozens of times over years before it needs to be replaced. For a Hoopla title, we could be paying $3.99 every single time someone checks it out, so it could only be checked out twice before it costs the same as that print book. Flex titles can often cost four to ten times as much as a print book, and they expire, as well. So it takes significantly more money to provide digital items than it does other items.
We understand that our digital items are very popular, and we want to continue to offer them to you. The daily use limit is the best way we have found to ensure that the budget is evenly distributed and everyone can get a chance to check something out.
If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to contact us.
