Thread by @SuperWendy

So NYPL is dumping Kanopy. Buckle up kiddies, your Auntie Wendy is here to explain the devil that is the pay-per-use model. Or as I like to call it - why you'll find Wendy crying in her office the first of the month.

Kanopy and Hoopla are both pay-per-use. What does this mean? Patrons get access to the entire catalog (yippee!) and the library only pays when a title is checked-out/streamed. A good theory, but in practice? Not so much.

Think about the service population of large library systems like NYPL, Brooklyn, LAPL etc. Dude, there's a lot of potential users. And we want all those folks to use the libraries but pay-per-use is impossible to sustain.

That's why libraries limit the number of titles patrons can check out per month on these services. Kanopy charges libraries anywhere from $1-$2 per check-out. Hoopla is all over the place - anywhere from 99 cents to $4.99. And the more patrons use it? The more the library pays.

That means the library is, essentially, being punished for promoting the service. And our budgets? They ain't going up. In fact, every library system I personally have knowledge of? The budget has either gone down or remained stagnant. For years.

Stagnant is better than down, but guess what? There's a boat-load of formats now. Patrons want them all (so do librarians!) and oh, remember those past lessons Auntie Wendy shared about publishers and their jacked-up digital lending and pricing models to libraries? Yeah, that.

So what do libraries do? Well, first they restrict access to the pay-per-use catalogs in the hopes to stem the tide. That's why some libraries have stopped offering certain formats in Hoopla or restricted titles based on pricing.

But for some libraries that's not enough - and hard decisions have to be made. Which New York is obviously making now with Kanopy. Also, remember those stories a few weeks back about celebrities advocating for library funding in New York? Yeah, budget constraints y'all.

So what can patrons do? Look, this isn't a thread to guilt you into NOT using the pay-per-use services your libraries offer. YOU TOTALLY SHOULD USE THEM! But make sure your electeds know how important these services are to you.

MAKE SURE YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS KNOW HOW IMPORTANT THE LIBRARY IS TO YOU! That you will vote for people who advocate better library funding. Who support libraries. Who understand how vital libraries are in their communities.

In short, digital lending in libraries is a complicated beast and while it's easy to point the finger at libraries, guys - this ain't all on us. We're trying. We're doing the best we can. We advocate for our communities every single day.

The truth is though that librarians advocating can been misconstrued as "self-serving" even if we have compelling numbers to back up that data. So join us in advocating. Hey, it can't make the problem any worse, right?

I had a head of steam yesterday and failed to mention that services like Kanopy and Hoopla get their content by negotiating with publishers and studios. So the pricing issue? What is sustainable for libraries and what isn't? There's a lot of players on the field.

TL;DR - pricing of digital content for the library market is a cluster-you-know-what.