Monthly Archives: February 2020

Curate your own film festival with
the power of your library card

hoopla has a great selection of documentaries for your patrons covering all kinds of interesting and exciting subject matters. Our Art House documentaries collection has the latest selection of trending titles and is updated frequently with buzz-worthy documentaries your patrons will be looking for.

Downloadable marketing assets are available at the hoopla Resource Center for you to promote documentaries at your library. The documentaries are available instantly for patrons to tap into and discover on hoopla.

hoopla also has great Art House collections for global cinema, classic films and modern indies.

Hoopla Blog

It’s a major election year, and while the outcomes are a mystery, we can all be informed voters.  There is still plenty of time to register for the PA primaries.

VOTING RESOURCES

• alleghenyvotes.com — Allegheny County’s site for:
  • registration,
  • absentee ballots (now able to place request online),
  • new voting machine demonstrations, and more
    
• votesPA.com — Pennsylvania’s site for:
  • registration,
  • finding your polling place,
  • absentee ballots, and more
    
• vote411.org — by the League of Women Voters for:
  • Candidate information,
  • ballot information, and more,
    

NEWS SOURCES

Finding good information can be a challenge, but there are reliable news sources.  No, facebook is not one of these!  eLibrary’s Opposing Viewpoints in Context database is very clear about the origins of its results, and it compiles results on many current topics.

Sites such as factcheck.org and even Snopes have never-ending streams of information to evaluate.  Another tool is ad fontes media Interactive Media Bias Chart.  It uses a methodology to rate overall reliability and political bias for many news outlets so that you can consider the source.

A recent article in The Atlantic (The 2020 Disinformation War) is food for thought.  Based on the Media Bias chart, one would expect this article to be fairly reliable and only somewhat biased to the left.  Individual articles may vary, of course.  It would be interesting to see how the same underlying story components would be treated by sites rated as unreliable and skewing to extreme political opposites, say, NewsPunch and Wonkette.  For more reliable results, search Opposing Viewpoints in Context for terms such as ‘election 2020’.

Christy @ Carnegie Library of McKeesport

OverDrive hold redelivery is scheduled to go live the week of March 2, 2020. At that time, hold redelivery will replace auto-checkout for all new and existing holds.

Hold redelivery will give users more flexibility to manage their holds and allow them to suspend a hold even after it’s made available to them, while maintaining their place on the wait list. By enabling users to pass books they don’t have time to read on to the next person in line, hold redelivery will help us connect more readers to the right book, at the right time. Please review the below summary for important details about this change.

How will it work?

Libby notifications will alert users when their holds become available. OverDrive will also add a “Notifications” section to our OverDrive website and the OverDrive app. After receiving notification that a hold is available, users can:

1. Borrow the title within 3 days. If your library has a different hold pick-up setting, OverDrive will automatically update it to 3 days.
2. Suspend the hold by selecting “deliver later.” This option passes the book to the next person in line while maintaining the user’s place on the wait list. After the suspension period (set by the user), the user will be able to borrow the book when the next copy is available.
3. Cancel the hold.

If the user takes no action, their hold will automatically be suspended as a one-time courtesy for 7 days. If no action is taken a second time, the hold will be cancelled automatically.

With the removal of auto-checkout, we may see a slight decrease in circulations as users defer checkouts. OverDrive expects this to level off over time as users adjust to the new functionality.

User messaging

In the coming weeks, OverDrive will add the following message on our OverDrive website and in the OverDrive app to provide users with advanced notice of this change. It will link to a Help article with more details.
In early March, we’re releasing a new feature to give you more control over your holds.

Help & resources

As with any change, there will be an adjustment period for users, so OverDrive has compiled the following resources to help with the transition:

• Notifications: Push and email hold notifications will be updated to reflect the new options.
• Marketing and communication kit: At launch, OverDrive will provide updated resources to help us spread the word about this change to our readers.
• API Integrations: OverDrive has shared their timeline for removing auto-checkout with vendors who utilize OverDrive APIs.

Please let me know if you have questions.

~ Hilary Lewis, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh