Hoopla
What is Hoopla
Hoopla is a digital collection platform that allows anyone who attains a public library card access to their resources. While not entirely public to everyone, it is still a digital collection that many libraries provide with their library card. I personally, have used Hoopla with both Brazoria County and El Paso public library cards.
Recourses
Hoopla provides many different recourses to include audiobooks, eBooks, music, TV shows, and movies. The primary recourses highlighted by many of the libraries are the audiobooks and eBooks. Hoopla organizes the resources with a “Home, Audiobooks, eBooks, Movies, Television, Bingepasses, and Music” pages. The home page includes trending books and videos, along with recommendations.
Purpose
The purpose of Hoopla is mostly entertainment, but could also be used for research. Hoopla can provide entertainment through reading books/comics, listening to books, watching television/movies, or listening to music. The platform can reach all different types of audiences ranging from those just interested in listening to music to bookworms seeking their next thrilling novel. The second available purpose of Hoopla can be greatly useful to students or those trying to increase their knowledge. Students can easily access the app or website in order to attain required readings needed for school or optional readings to help with the understanding of subjects.
Classification System
Hoopla uses a faceted classification system. When using the search feature, you can filter results by “Format, User Rating, Release Date, Date Added, or Language.” The application does not categorize the results into specific spots, where it can not fit into many categories. I believe that this classification system is the most effective for connecting potential audiences with resources they have. For applications that connect people to new products, such as new books, videos, or music that are based on interest, I think that faceted classification works best. Faceted classification allows for people to find new interest based on broader categories such as language, format, rating. This allows for those interested to break down results by things that are truly important that might prevent them from pursuing a result. While weeding out the results that do not work, users can find new results that they might not know to look for, allowing for new interest to be found.
Relationships
There are very limited relationships shown between the larger type of resource categories. For example, there are not any hyperlinks or see also sections connecting the TV series to audiobooks. The only connections that can be seen are resources that share qualities such as sharing genres, authors, or series.