Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Digital Collections topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Corona City Library consolidates e-resources and plans new Aspen Discovery catalog
Summary
Library staff reported a 2.4 million–title collection that is overwhelmingly electronic, described four major e-platforms and said the library will roll out Aspen Discovery to unify searches, holds and an electronic library card; staff said a specific launch date in late April was not specified in the meeting.
Librarian II Jennifer Marlatt told trustees the Corona City Library’s total collection now stands at about 2,400,000 titles, of which roughly 82,000 (about 3%) are physical items and the remaining 2,300,000 (about 97%) are e-titles. Marlatt said the library uses four primary e-platforms and has joined consortiums to expand access.
Marlatt described the platforms as follows: Canopy (about 34,000 titles; pay-per-use model and includes children’s titles and film/TV); Palace Project (about 82,000 titles; a California-library consortium and single-use lending model); Cloud Library (about 12% of the e-collection; includes ebooks, audiobooks and magazines and participates in a state consortium); and Hoopla (about 1.8 million titles; pay-per-use but allows simultaneous access and includes audiobooks, movies and comics).
Marlatt said digital usage grew about 130% over the prior year and that Hoopla accounted for roughly 60% of that increase. The library recorded about 71,000 borrows across the four platforms last year; Marlatt said those borrows represented roughly 20% of total library circulation. The combined platform budget for e-resources was stated as about $116,000 and Marlatt said that is funded entirely from the library’s budget.
Staff announced plans to implement Aspen Discovery (including the Aspen Lita app) to centralize catalog search, holds, room reservations, local-history items and an electronic, scannable library card on patrons’ phones. Marlatt said patrons will still need the original platform apps to read or stream checked-out items, but Aspen will allow patrons to find and check out items across platforms without switching apps. Marlatt said the library planned an April rollout but did not specify an exact launch date during the meeting.
Trustees asked whether the library can break out Hoopla spending by format (movies/TV vs. audiobooks) and whether third-party/community events will be integrated into the Aspen calendar; Marlatt said Hoopla-format breakouts could be investigated and that the initial Aspen launch will focus on library events only, with the possibility of broader integration later.
