Patrons expect more from libraries’ digital collections—from customized recommendations to instant title availability. At the same time, onerous licensing agreements make it more difficult for libraries to maintain their digital collections. With digital offerings making up 40–60% of some libraries’ circulations, digital strategy is crucial.
At “A Bigger Conversation: How to Sustain a Robust Digital Collection in Today’s Library Environment,” a session held Saturday, June 28, at the Aloft Hotel during the 2025 ALA Annual Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia, Ann Ford, vice president of sales and customer support for Hoopla, shared insight on the evolving digital landscape and challenges libraries face, as well as advice for how libraries can market their offerings and advocate for more sustainable digital models.
Libraries report that more than half of their digital budgets are spent on ebooks and audiobooks without perpetual licenses, which can lead to diminishing collections as licenses need to be renewed. With the average cost of a metered book at $80 and an average utilization of less than 50%, the cost per circulation of a metered ebook can be almost $5 or more.
“The average cost per circ in year one would be $4.71 on an audiobook license…You can start to see how difficult it’s getting to sustain a digital collection,” Ford said. This burden is leading to shrinking digital collections. Soon, Ford said, “you’re missing mid- and backlist titles, you’re probably missing series titles.” Ford hopes that libraries and their partners can unite to push back against this cycle of rising costs and advocate for more sustainable agreements.
The proliferation of AI-generated content is another hurdle for collection development in libraries and at Hoopla. While Hoopla is changing its contracts with publishers to require them to provide AI-related metadata, “we need to work together to set standards,” Ford suggested. Publisher data for a title with an AI-generated cover should be distinguishable from one with an author who used AI as a writing tool and one that was wholly AI-generated. While Hoopla now offers filters that allow libraries to opt out of AI-generated content, fine-tuning that control is difficult without standardized documentation.
In this evolving landscape, it’s essential that libraries have a digital collection development strategy that is more than a footnote on the policy for physical collections. With 70–80% of your budget being spent on books that disappear after two years, “you can’t afford to set it and forget it,” Ford said.
A comprehensive, forward-looking roadmap can help library staff make more confident decisions and adapt to shifting patron demands. Hoopla’s own collection development policy, which will be released in the coming weeks, faces AI head-on, according to Ford, and must continue to evolve. The company already reviews thousands of titles each month that libraries and their own internal systems flag for possible AI content. “If we can identify a publisher that’s sending us a bunch of AI-generated works, we’ll sever that relationship,” she said. “We’re catching a lot of bad content. It is important to us.”
Still, libraries have many opportunities to grow engagement through their digital content. Ford suggested incorporating digital offerings into the library’s programming. Library workers tend to think of programming as serving people who come into the building, she said, but “you probably have a percentage of patrons looking to engage with the library in different ways. Meet them where they are.”
The average household spends $1,200 or more on subscriptions each year, and Ford believes the savings on those costs that libraries can offer are an unbeatable deal. “Libraries are in a position to own this space,” she advised. “Let your community know what you offer.”
