If You’ve Got Hoopla, You’ve Got a Lot to Enjoy

If your public library offers Hoopla Digital services, and 1,200 of them in the US and Canada do so far, you’ve got access to a metric tonne of digital streaming.

My local library doesn’t participate (though several other counties in Maryland do, including Frederick County, Howard, Prince George’s, Prince William, and Charles County, along with much of eastern MarylandHoopla Logo - blue loopy letters in a sans serif font). But my former local library in New Jersey does – and I’m sad I didn’t realize until now how useful this service is. I would have explored it much earlier.

NB: I was offered a trial membership so I could evaluate the service. I’m not being compensated for this review. The Press membership I was given so I could explore the site and the app offers a higher borrow limit than some library patrons may have.

Short review: if you have access, and you enjoy a lot of audiobooks, comics, or books from presses like Riptide or Dreamspinner, I think you’ll really like it.

Alas, the fastest way to find out if your library offers access is to either look for mention of Hoopla on your local library website, or search “[your local library] + Hoopla” to see if anything appears in the results.

Or, you can try to sign up for Hoopla, and it’ll ask you to choose a library once you’ve created an account username and password.

But I did find a map online with a list of participating libraries on the right side – though I can’t verify its accuracy.

So, now that you’ve maybe figured out if you have access, why should you want it? Hoopla offers digital access to television shows, movies, music, ebooks, comics, and audiobooks. The service is free for library patrons. Libraries pay a fee for each item borrowed, so often the total number of items per patron varies, and can be anywhere from 3 to 10 items borrowed per patron per month, depending on the library’s terms.

There’s a Hoopla app for Android and iOS devices, so you can stream shows, read ebooks, listen to audiobooks – basically all the things we like to do in the comfiest location – through your library at no additional cost to you. You can also use the app to connect to a Chromecast and view borrowed visual materials on your very nice television set.

There’s a pretty good romance catalog, too – but the list of publishing providers doesn’t include some of the more obvious names, like, you know, PenguinRandomHouse or Macmillan. I think those looking for ebooks from major authors in romance will be a little bummed out by the lack of options.

But for those who enjoy m/m romance from Dreamspinner or Riptide, dive in and save your dollars – their catalogs should keep you happy for awhile. And since I’ve heard from so many of you how expensive the books are, Hoopla may save your reading budget by a lot. There are also ample lists from publishers like Sourcebooks (including one of mine) but inside those catalogs, you can’t isolate by genre.

Finding specific ebooks by genre may prove a little frustrating. There are ample tags, and I can isolate the publisher once I pull up a book from that press, but I can’t search by publishing house. I wasn’t able to narrow my searches to “lesbian romance,” for example. There’s “lesbian” and a category for “romance-lgbt” but not one that isolates lesbian romance titles. And the “multicultural-interracial romance” tag has a total of 41 titles.

Audiobook folks, if you’ve been burning through your Audible credits too fast, Hoopla might be your new best friend. For example, “Jaci Burton” in the search yields a number of her audiobooks, but no ebooks.

Screen shot of Jaci Burton search, with a number of titles but all in audio

I did a few searches for major names, and often came up with nothing – Nora Roberts, for example, only lists the Love Between the Covers documentary, and no books, audio or otherwise. Sherry Thomas – audiobooks only, and just seven of them. Tessa Dare – same thing. There were zero results for Victoria Dahl, and only some titles for Theresa Romain. Christina Lauren: audio only. So, like I said, if you’re an audiobook fan, this is a great match for you if your library provides access.

In music, I found the Hamilton cast recording, and if you want to take a deep dive into Madonna’s catalog, there’s a lot to keep you busy. Newer albums from Sting and Lady Gaga were included, too – there’s a lot of material under “popular music.”

The digital comics selection included the comics I currently subscribe to – the Archie reboot and the Josie & the Pussycats reboot. The Lumberjanes are in the catalog, too, along with Monstress, Volumes 1-6. And, hold on to your hats, six volumes of Saga, too. The account I have currently gives me a week with each comic I borrow, and it’ll return automatically.

Reading comics on my phone wasn’t the most comfortable. Whereas Comixology’s app has the option to use “Guided View,” which offers a sequential closeup on each panel, box, piece of dialogue, or focal point of the page (making it easier for folks like me with heinous eyesight to read them on a smaller screen), the Hoopa app for comics shows the full page, and you have to zoom in.

For example, here’s a page from Sabrina, the 2016 reboot.

Page one of Sabrina, Volume 1- all panels on one page, which is hard to read

On a browser, piece of cake to read. On my phone, it was difficult.

Screenshot of ebook reading settings with nine text and a preview of how text will appear Reading ebooks, however, was much more comfortable and offered a lot of options to customize the reader experience.

The Hoopla reader offers nine different fonts, a wide variety of text sizes, plus formatting options that allow you to customize the margins and spacing, and themes that allow you to choose from five background and text color combinations.

For those who use screen readers, I don’t have a way of testing whether Hoopla is compatible – if you know, please feel free to comment or email me!

In movies, the borrowing terms for me were 72 hours, which is similar to the digital rental from our cable provider. And while there weren’t brand new movies, there are a number of documentaries I have on my list of films I want to see, like Sriracha and SommLove Between the Covers is in the catalog, too. There are some French language movies, Chinese cinema,  Spanish, and a few in Hindi as well.

Of note: in the settings, you can set the searching and browsing to “Only show kid-appropriate content in your browse and search results,” so if you put Hoopla on a young person’s device, you can limit their access accordingly.

I think, that if your library offers access, Hoopla is well worth your time exploring, most especially if you’re trying to save money on the amount of digital media you consume from pay services. For audiobook, comic, and popular music fans, it’s terrific. It’s not a full replacement for other services, but Hoopla is a great asset to folks who, like me, are trying to cut down on purchases and exploring borrowing options.

 

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  1. Joanna says:

    My library offers both Hoopla and Overdrive which I use mostly for the audiobooks. If I’m looking for a particular author or title I check both, sometimes neither has it but I can always find something to listen to while I walk! It’s been a great money saver.

  2. Moriah says:

    Hoopla has Tantor Audio (at least most of their new releases) so they have Jennifer Ashley’s MacKenzie series, Caroline Linden’s most recent releases, and Anna Huber’s Lady Darby series. New releases from Tantor are often available the evening before they actually release – I check them out and have them ready to listen Tuesday morning.

    For video, I know that they have TNT’s Librarian series.

  3. Lizabeth Tucker says:

    Bummer. Checked the map and verified what my library website indicated. It isn’t available. But just two counties south, it is, so it might spread to ours soon enough. I love the idea of accessing m/m romances. Our library, bless them, just doesn’t carry any. When funds are limited, they told me, they can only go so far. We’re a relatively small county librarywise. Only 5 branches and one sorta shared with the local State College.

  4. MsShush says:

    in MA any resident can get a Boston Public Library Ecard that lets them access the BPL’s electronic resources. Another option is any MA resident can either cross register their card or get a card in any other library in the state. Maybe similar options exist in other states.

  5. Linda S. says:

    As a librarian and a library customer, I love Hoopla! The reason you see gaps in the collection is down to what rights are granted by publishers to different library vendors. The catalogs of the two major public library vendors, Overdrive and Hoopla, end up complementing each other pretty well to cover all areas. Large library systems like ours (Harris County Public Library) often have both. Thanks for sharing!

  6. Hannah says:

    This summer I moved to a new county where the library is very well-used though underfunded. The Overdrive catalog is scanty but they have Hoopla! I’m listening to Simone St James’s books now–they have all but the newest one on Hoopla.

  7. Cassandra says:

    Linda S.,

    I’m in the Harris County sysytem but I just have Overdrive and don’t see the other one. Could you point me to where to access Hoopla?

  8. Auntymoemoe says:

    As MsShush already stated the Boston Public library have hoopla available and anyone who lives or works in the state are eligible to get a library card( this is because we, I work for the bpl so know, get funding from the state). If your library doesn’t do hoopla see if a nearby community has it. Sometimes they allow nonresidents to get library cards.
    I use overdrive mostly but hoopla is great to listen to music I’m thinking of buying

  9. Linda S says:

    Hi Cassandra,

    Go to http://www.hoopladigital.com and set up an account with your email address, select Harris County Public library as your library and enter your library card number. Then you should have full access. I use the app on my phone for my audiobooks.

  10. Liz says:

    Agree that hoopla is awesome. I held off for a long time because my phone is usually short on memory so I was reluctant to add another app. But I bit the bullet and don’t regret it. I use my library’s Overdrive service for ebooks and hoopla for audiobooks. This fall I made my way through audiobooks of all of Thea Harrison’s series – totally blanking on what it’s called but the series with Dragos. My library doesn’t have the books in any other form. If you can – try it!

  11. Cassandra says:

    Thank you, Linda S.! I got it all set up with the app and have some Mary Balogh’s, Loretta Chase’s and The Imitation Game to entertain me. I am glad to find out about it here, my branch library wasn’t really advertising it.

  12. Marci says:

    I love Hoopla and am lucky, as my library offers both that and Overdrive. The only issue I run into with Hoopla is the checkout limit. Overdrive is unlimited monthly (limited to three items out at a time), so I try to find items there first. Hoopla we get six items total a month. But Hoopla items are also available all the time, as opposed to being checked out and customers having to go on hold lists. So that is a great perk. There are some Overdrive items where I am on a holds list for months.

    Hoopla has all of Shelly Laurenston’s Pride series on audio, so I’m trying to catch up with that. And also Amanda Bouchet’s new ebook A Promise Of Fire. I also found out they have a favorite mini-series of mine growing up – The 10th Kingdom, which was on NBC back in 2000. Plus, I’m finally able to catch up with some digital comics and see which ones I might like to pursue more. It’s an awesome service!

  13. Adrienne says:

    I’ve been on a non-stop audiobook kick ever since our library began to offer Hoopla, and it’s been wonderful. I’m currently listening my way through Eloisa James’ Essex sisters series. The even have the entire Boss series, by Abigail Barnett, which is one of my favorite contemporary series.

    I’ve been less satisfied with my Hoopla experience with ebooks, as the functions can be a bit rudimentary – depending on the edition, the app doesn’t seem to save your place in the book, and the text isn’t the easiest to read.

  14. Jessica says:

    Love Between the Covers! Amazing. I didn’t know where I could see it (legally), even though I was one of the backers of the original Kickstarter. I had already created a Hoopla account through my library but I didn’t quite know what to do with it… and hooray, now I do!

  15. Allie says:

    The library I use most (not my city’s, so I pay an annual fee and get access to way more books, plus their children’s librarian is amazing so I feel good about supporting them instead of just dropping in at story times) doesn’t have Hoopla, but my city’s does! Guess I’ll have to wander over there and pick up a library card today so I can try it out!

  16. kitkat9000 says:

    Though my library, Baltimore County PL, does have Overdrive and the 3M Cloud library, they don’t have Hoopla. However, they do offer digitally streamed movies from a curated collection of the “most significant films of all time”, The Criterion Collection, (something I knew nothing about) with unlimited views of about ~150 films. Some of them even seem interesting.

    Hard to complain though, that 3M cloud app has literally thousands of Harlequins available at any given time. That was how I discovered Sarah Morgan.

  17. Julia (@mizzelle) says:

    My library has Overdrive and Hoopla. I use Overdrive mostly for ebooks these days, because I don’t like the audiobook selection and there’s usually a massive wait. Hoopla has no wait times. Remember that, no wait lists. There is that pesky “6 titles a month” but I don’t hit that often. I’ll agree on the Tantor Media mention because, they have quite the romance selection. They have nearly *all* Nalini Singh’s audiobooks, except for the first Psy Changeling weirdly. Hoopla just added Harper, so you’ll also see Avon and some of the Harlequin audios as well.

    There is a collection marked “just added to Hoopla” — that’ll show you all the new titles. I check that most weeks to see if any interesting things they’ve added. They can be odd sometimes with series, so you may only 1 and 3 rather than all the books.

    If you’re Doctor Who fan, they have a LOT of Big Finish audio dramas and some of their other ranges as well.

    The music is decent. My library doesn’t buy new music now (for budget reasons), so I check Hoopla to see if they get it so I can use it as a preview.

    One thing I’ll caution on (and I hate sounding like a sourpuss on this): not every library subscribes to every part of the service. So mine gets audiobooks and music, because that’s what they’re lacking in their collection. So check to see which parts you actually get before getting too squee-y.

  18. Sue Danic says:

    They’ve got Lorelei James, Lauren Dane and some Kit Rocha.

  19. hng23 says:

    If you’re in Toronto, TPL offers both Overdrive & Hoopla.

  20. mel burns says:

    Hoopla is not my favorite because of buffering. I like Overdrive because I can download and listen without wifi. Overdrive used to have a large catalog of audios until Amazon who owns Brilliance pulled all their audiobooks. No more J.D. Robbs or older Georgette Heyers when I’m in the mood to listen to an old favorite.

    We have used Hoopla for movies while traveling and it has been great for the kids.

    @SBSarah: If you have your library card from New Jersey you should be able to use their services. I keep my Seattle card up to date though we now live in SoCal and I use my mom’s card for the Phoenix system. I am hooked into six libraries and I use them all!

  21. Kareni says:

    Is it possible to read Hoopla ebooks on a Kindle or must one have some other sort of device?

  22. Stefanie Magura says:

    AS a screen reader user, I found the website a bit clunky, and it was harder to find where I could sign up, But having checked my library’s site, I’m not sure they even have it anyway. It might be worth it to see if it is any easier on the app. This has happened before. For instance, Pandora’s website is terrible and the customer service not worth dealing with when I have problems, but the app I can use pretty well.

  23. Stephanie says:

    Check with neighboring libraries to see if you can get a card. In the DC area, you can get free library cards at any other jurisdiction in the DMV.

  24. Stefanie Magura says:

    My library system, Buncombe County, use to have access to OneClick Digital which is a similar service, but it seems that isn’t the case anymore. They also use to allow people to sign up for Bookshare through their service, but I don’t see that either unless I’m looking in the wrong place. This is all surprising since our county includes Asheville which if not a large city is a well-known one. Question for those who use the music services: Is that better, worse, or comparable to streaming services such as Spotify. That’s how I check out new-to-me music, especially since there I can listen to complete albums.

  25. Moriah says:

    @Kareni

    If you have a Kindle Fire Tablet, you can read books using the Hoopla app, but the books are not capable with the e-ink Kindles.

  26. Lori says:

    OMG thanks for sharing about this! It looks like my library does subscribe to Hoopla and I’m noticing they have some ebook and audiobook titles that aren’t on Overdrive (which my library also subscribes to). It’s awesome because between being able to request books from other libraries in the county, Overdrive, and now Hoopla I’m able to get just about every book I’m interested in. And there are a fair few tv shows and movies on Hoopla too (THE LIBRARIANS TV SHOW AND MOVIES ARE ON THERE!).

    Of course, I have a terrible habit of requesting tons of books at the same time so this isn’t going to help with that. LOL. But I am so very happy that local libraries are expanding their offerings with services like these. It’s better for my wallet and I get to support my local library!

  27. Karen D says:

    I work at a library and we have both Hoopla and Overdrive and use them to complement each other. Many books that are not available on Overdrive can be found on Hoopla. As someone else mentioned, the no waiting feature is awesome, though the item limit might not be for heavy readers. The limit is there to protect your library’s budget though! Also, as mentioned above, remember that every library will have different content on resources like Overdrive and Hoopla. This is why I got a reciprocal card for the larger, neighboring county–they have different content in their Overdrive so I get the best of both. Or at least my favorites:)

  28. Julia (@mizzelle) says:

    Re: the buffering, you do need to have a steady wifi to stream anything, but if you use the app, you have the option to download the title to listen to.

  29. Gail Wood says:

    Thank you! I’ve been using Overdrive a lot because I blew through my audible credits! I just tried Hoopal today after reading this. awesome. After reading your review of Monstress, and have already read 2 chapters. My first foray into comics. I’m an older person and did not grow up reading comics. Been Reading a lot about comics and am delighted with what I discovered. Thanks for SMart Bitches!

  30. Laurel says:

    Thank you so much for this post. We can get Hoopla through our awesome Seattle Public Library but we had ignored it after downloading several years ago because the content just wasn’t there. Thanks to your post referencing the comic options, both my husband and my 9 year old spent the afternoon reading comics on Hoopla and we have more movies in our queue now, too.

  31. Kini says:

    I am excited to check this out. I don’t have a lot of luck with my local library (Frederick county, Maryland) I think the MD site is clunky and not user friendly so I hardly ever use it. But I am trying to be more conservative on how much I am spending out of pocket for books. I have high hopes!

  32. gremlin says:

    I don’t want to read on my tablet, and I didn’t find any of the particular ebooks from my wishlist in their selection anyway, but I’ve found Hoopla to be great for listening to recent albums. I can stream and decide if it’s something I’d be willing to buy, or maybe I just want a song or two.

    I use it from the web while I’m on my computer, though I could install the app on my phone and/or tablet too. [And I might, just for holiday music.]

    Plus if you have more than one library card that allows Hoopla, it looks like once you’ve burned through your allowance for the month with one library, you can log out of that account and log into another library to burn through your allowance there too. 🙂

  33. Marelis says:

    Thanks for this post! My library has Hoopla and I had only used it for audiobooks. Because of this post, last night, I graded papers while watching “Love Between the Covers.” That documentary was awesome! They have a great catalog of books too but I don’t like reading on my ipad so for now, I will have to stick with audiobooks and movies.

    Thanks for the post!

  34. rachel says:

    I’ve been using Hoopla through my library for about a year now, and I love it :).

  35. Rin says:

    As a librarian in Maryland- one of the perks of being a state resident is that you can get a card at ANY/ALL of the county systems with proof of MD residence. This means that the next time you’re in a county that has Hoopla, swing by and sign up for a card for access to all of their digital resources.

  36. SB Sarah says:

    @Rin:

    I had no idea! This is AWESOME. Thank you!!

  37. denise says:

    Maryland public library system also offers borrowing print books through Marina. For example: HCPL doesn’t carry 50 Shades, but you can borrow it through Marina from another Maryland public library and pick it up at your favorite HCPL location.

  38. denise says:

    Just checked, HCPL does have Hoopla and a bunch of other things to access online.

  39. kitkat9000 says:

    @Rin: thank you SO MUCH for this. I’ll be signing up in Harford county next week.

    Weirdly, I already hold both BCPL and Enoch Pratt free library (Baltimore County and City, respectively) cards, but didn’t realize this was reciprocal throughout all jurisdictions.

  40. Julie says:

    This Marylander didn’t know that either… thank you! 😀

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