Tips & Tricks for ACLA Databases and Downloadables

Holidays on Hoopla

We’ve been posting a lot about Hoopla recently – and for good reason! There’s so much available with no wait for library patrons! It’s all FREE for them with their Allegheny County library card.

And with Holidays on Hoopla, users can get great content to make their season merry & bright. From heartwarming Thanksgiving stories to enchanting Christmas adventures and the radiant glow of Hanukkah traditions, Hoopla has the perfect mix to entertain all ages and spirits high throughout the holiday season.

The Holiday Food & Entertaining collection has recipes, tips, and hosting inspo.

Holiday Entertaining

There’s kid-specific collections for Thanksgiving, Christmas & Hanukkah!

All collections

And what romance lover can resist the Countdown to Christmas Hallmark+ BingePass collection?!?

Hallmark+ BingePass

This is just a portion of the holiday & winter collections available! With these resources, you’ll find social media assets and flyers to spread the word about these great collections.

And if you’re looking for additional Hoopla promotional materials, you can find those in the full Hoopla Resource Center. There’s great content to share all year long!

-Richelle, Sewickley Public Library

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Hoopla “Bonus Borrows” has your Halloween horrors!

Did you forget to check out some creepy DVDs for your spooky party…and that old copy of Bridget Jones’s Diary just won’t cut it? BUT you also already used up all your borrows on Hoopla? Well don’t forget about “Bonus Borrows”!

Available the last week of the month for those of us who don’t plan ahead, these don’t cost one of your five checkouts and you can feel free to binge on them all! For the last week of October, it looks like Hoopla has us covered with plenty of screams & chills in their bonus movies selection.

– Heather Auman, Western Allegheny Community Library

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Craftsy on hoopla

While we are all familiar with Creativebug, there is another crafting site available for our patrons and that is Craftsy on hoopla.

There are hundreds of different types of crafts to learn with Craftsy. And several are available as BingePasses. They range from the basics of sewing, knitting or crocheting to artisan breadmaking, journaling and sketching.

Craftsy is a great compliment to Creativebug.

Tracy – Monroeville Public Library

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Trainings!

We have had some great training opportunities so far this year. In April, Heather from Western Allegheny Community Library did a refresher on Hoopla for library staff. Heather went over some Hoopla basics but also touched on some lesser-known features.

In September, Mary Phillips and I did a deeper dive into BlueCareer and FinancialFit. Two of our newer resources. BlueCareer provides information on skilled trades and can connect patrons with trade schools, apprenticeship opportunities and even a simple, mobile-friendly want to connect with employers. FinancialFit offers short, easy-to-understand lessons and interactive tools to help develop and support basic financial literacy.

Rounding out this trio of trainings, in October, we had an excellent overview of Tutor.com by our Tutor.com Account manager. If you haven’t used Tutor.com in a while, it’s worth a revisit. They’ve updated the interface and added in a new suite of tutoring options for Career and Technical Education (CTE) services.

These three trainings are available on the Training Resources tab here on the Backstage. If you have any problems accessing a training, please email me or sent me a message on Teams.

-Hilary Lewis, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh

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