Beginning Sunday, September 1, 2024 Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County libraries are making the following changes to Libby and hoopla:
- Reducing Libby holds from 20 to 10 at a time
- Reducing Libby borrows from 20 to 10 at a time
- Reducing hoopla borrows from 15 to 5 per month
- Requiring PIN authentication to the Libby sign-in process
If your account has more than 10 holds on digital items as of September 1, you will not lose your holds. You just will not be able to place new holds until you are within the limit.
These changes are coming due to the incredible popularity of the Libby and Hoopla digital collections, which has seen a 64% increase in usage since 2019.
While digital items may seem more abstract than physical items, libraries often pay up to 3x the cost of print versions to license e-books and e-audiobooks. Due to this, spending for Libby and Hoopla have gone up 51% since 2019 and libraries in the county are now spending over three million dollars a year for e-resources.
We love that you love our e-resource collections and appreciate your understanding as we make these changes.
