Beginning September 2, 2025 there will be changes to Hoopla at the Chicopee Public Library.

Why Make This Change?

Hoopla is free to Chicopee residents, but the library pays per checkout – so as usage increases, so do the library’s costs. 

When we first offered Hoopla in 2016, we served 61 patrons. This year, from January 1, 2025 to July 31, 2025, Hoopla was used by 1,813 different patrons. Although we are thrilled to offer a service that is so well-used, our cost per month has increased by more than 730% since 2016, with no end in sight. 

Since WE love Hoopla and YOU love Hoopla, we want to make sure we can continue to offer the service to as many patrons as we can. This means controlling our costs in order to keep the service sustainable and within budget.

What will it look like?

When the budget limit for the day has been reached you will see this message, even if you haven’t used all your checkouts for the month:

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.

When the borrow limit is reached, no one will be able to check out Hoopla items for the remainder of that day; checkouts will resume at 12:01am the following day.

We understand that this is a big change to Hoopla for our patrons, and that it will be inconvenient for you to sometimes find that the budget limit has been reached for the day. 

Here are some ways you can increase your access to Hoopla titles:

• Bonus Borrows are available through Hoopla on the last 7 days of every month. This is a special collection of titles that is available even if you’ve used your checkouts for the month – and these borrows are outside of our budget cap and come at no cost to the library. For that last seven days of the month, you can always check out from that collection no matter what.
• Boston Public Library’s eCard is available to any Massachusetts resident. Click here to apply. The BPL eCard will give you access to all of Boston Public Library’s online resources, including two new platforms for eBooks and eAudiobooks. Come see our Reference Librarians for help signing up for or using a BPL eCard.

Here are other ways to access Digital Content:

• In Libby, you can look at titles available for checkout immediately by filtering results to “Available Now.” Our librarians can also help you connect your Libby account to collections from the other library consortia in Massachusetts, which should decrease your wait times for most items.
• Music downloads are available through Freegal. You may download 3 songs per week in MP3 format.
• Kanopy is a video streaming service that gives you instant access to movies, documentaries, and kids favorites. You can access titles through the Libby app (under “Extras”) or download the Kanopy app.

Or, you could go old school:

• We have an extensive selection of physical books, audiobooks, DVDs, and CDs in the library, as well as the ability to order items from any of the other libraries in CW MARS.

We are grateful that so many people like and use our library’s services, and we appreciate your understanding as we work to keep Hoopla’s costs within our budget.