Our community reads — a lot! In 2024, OverDrive listed Multnomah County Library as number six in the world for digital checkouts.
We are committed to ensuring access to our robust digital collections for everyone and responsibly managing the rising costs of these items; therefore, we’re making some changes to our digital checkout policy. Starting Tuesday, July 1, the following changes will go into effect:
- Libby holds will go from 20 to 10 at a time.
- Hoopla borrows will go from 10 to 8 per month.
- Kanopy tickets will go from 20 to 12 per month.
The library’s Ebook Central access will be cancelled. We will retain the titles we own.
What this means for you
- Libby: You won’t lose any of your Libby holds if you have more than 10 holds on July 1. But, you won’t be able to place new holds until you’re within the new limit of 10.
- Good news: The amount of items you can borrow in Libby is not changing! You can still get 20 books at a time and read unlimited digital magazines.
- Hoopla and Kanopy: You will have fewer items you can borrow per month. While most patrons don’t reach these limits, it will be a change for some. These services work on a “cost-per-checkout” basis, meaning the more they’re used, the more the library pays. We already have a collective monthly budget for Hoopla and Kanopy. When as a library system, we reach the total limit, access is restricted for the remainder of the month. By lowering the amount each patron can borrow, we’re less likely to hit our monthly budget. This means more patrons overall can borrow titles within the budget we have for these platforms.
- Good news: for Kanopy, there are some videos you can watch without counting against the monthly limit! Check out the Easy Watching and Favorites collections, or use search filters to look for more options.
- Ebook Central: We will retain 2,000 titles that we’ve purchased, and these will be accessible in the library catalog, but will no longer have access to the full service or collection. Other Ebook Central records will be removed.
- Good news: The most popular titles from Ebook Central are available in Libby!
Why we’re making these changes
“Most of our digital collections are extremely popular, especially in Libby,” says Electronic Content Librarian Kady Ferris. “The use of all of our digital collections has continued to go up each year, increasing by 64% since 2019. This is wonderful news! And with that increased use comes increased costs.”
Our spending on copies to fill holds has increased over 500% in the last decade. This is because we’ve seen an increase in how much patrons use our e-books and audiobooks in combination with increased costs from publishers. The increasing costs have created an unsustainable expense.
In addition to purchasing more materials to meet the increased demand, prices for digital materials are more expensive for libraries.
Libraries pay more for e-books and audiobooks than consumers
Libraries can offer check outs of a single e-book to one patron at a time. So, we purchase multiple copies, just like we do for physical materials, to help lower your hold times for materials. In addition to purchasing multiple copies, we pay more for each limited license of these titles than a typical consumer price.
A single copy of an e-book can cost a library over $75 to license! And audiobooks are even more expensive — many cost over $100 with some popular titles coming in at over $125.
For example, you could buy an e-book of the popular 2024 Kristin Hannah title The Women for about $15 or the audiobook for about $33. A single library copy costs $60 for either — that’s a big difference in price! Multiply that $60 by the number of copies that we need to purchase to meet the popular demand, and costs rise quickly.
In addition, publishers only allow libraries to lease titles based on either time or total number of checkouts. After the defined amount of time or number of checkouts has passed, we must re-purchase the license.
We purchase e-book licenses based on the demand
Wait times for our most popular titles can be long. We buy licenses to reduce the length of those wait times. The amount of holds our patrons place on a book directly impacts how many licenses we purchase. We try to maintain a specific ratio of the number of holds on a book to the number of copies we have purchased a license for. For example, we try to maintain a 9 to 1 ratio for adult audiobooks.
While we try to maintain our set ratio of holds to purchases, it isn’t possible for our most popular titles. For example, it would cost over $45,000 to purchase enough licenses just to meet the holds ratio for our top 10 most requested e-books and audiobooks!
We’re not alone in this
We’re not the only library system trying to balance our digital expenses. Other public libraries have recently adjusted their digital checkout limits to make these collections sustainable. For example:
- Seattle Public Library reduced their number of Libby holds from 25 to 10.
- Carnegie Public Library reduced their number of Libby holds from 20 to 10.
- Chicago Public Library reduced their number of Libby holds from 12 to 5.
- And many more.
What you can do
Manage your to-read list
- Use Libby’s tag feature to keep track of as many titles as you want with custom tags. Start a “For Later” shelf to keep track of your to-read list rather than placing holds.
Be a good digital neighbor
- Read or listen to a sample before you place a title on hold to decide if it’s right for you.
- If a hold is available, check it out right away or schedule to deliver it later if you don’t have the time to read it.
- If you finish a book before it’s due or realize it isn’t for you, return it early.
Browse what’s available now
- While you're waiting for a hold on our most popular titles, try browsing what’s available to check out now. You can do so by using filters or curated lists from librarians, like Popular Titles You May Have Missed. "We know that waits are long for the newest titles,” says Ferris. “But we do our best to highlight titles with available copies people may have missed when they were brand new. If you ever need help locating available books that fit your reading taste, please ask us! We are happy to help.”
We want to make sure as many patrons as possible are able to access our materials in our library spaces and online. Want to learn more about how e-books and audiobooks are priced and how that impacts libraries here in Oregon? Check out OPB’s Think Out Loud episode on the growing demand for digital books in Oregon libraries.