“Librarians have been rushing to increase the strength of their digital collections in order to serve their communities,” Jankowski said, noting that hoopla partner libraries are increasing borrow limits, and more libraries are adding hoopla as a new service. Jeff Jankowski, founder and CEO of hoopla, said his company is also seeing a massive increase in usage across the board. Every day for the last week we’ve had record days,” Potash said, “record days for checkouts, record days for circulation, record days for holds, record days for the number of first-time users, record days for downloads and installation of the Libby app.” “If I gave you data for today it would be old news by tomorrow. “Every single day we are crossing into new record territory,” said Steve Potash, CEO for OverDrive, the leading e-book provider for libraries. Library vendors, meanwhile, are working hard to meet the surge. “The speed at which this was done, and the options available, were not.” “We almost always shift big chunks of un-earmarked money to our digital assets, so that part is normal,” Coan observed. The Columbus library is also using social media posts to push RBdigital’s Unlimited Audiobooks, which are simultaneously available to library patrons.ĭianne Coan, a division director for the Fairfax County (Va.) Public Library reported that her library has also boosted digital spending. And what we are doing is not unusual, it’s happening at libraries big and small throughout the country.”Ĭatherine Mason, catalogue & serials manager for the Columbus (Ohio) Metropolitan Library, said her library and its consortium- the Digital Downloads Collaboration (which managed some three million digital lends for its members in 2019) has doubled its budget for library e-book provider OverDrive in response to the crisis, and also increased budgets with other providers, including hoopla and Kanopy. “Most of my colleagues in the Westchester Library System are doing the same. “We are taking our remaining funds for this fiscal year, which ends June 30, about $150,000, and spending them almost entirely on e-books and digital audio,” he said. “The spending on digital resources we’re seeing now is completely unprecedented,” said Brian Kenney, a PW columnist and director of the White Plains (N.Y.) Public Library, which shut down its building on March 14 and has ceased all ordering of physical materials. And the shift could prove to be a watershed moment for a digital library market where the major publishers have so far proceeded cautiously-and sometimes contentiously. shutter their physical locations to battle the outbreak of Covid-19, they are rapidly transferring budget dollars to e-books, digital audio, and other digital media to serve their communities.
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