Quick review of Hoopla!

So basically this is the "poor man's version" of Netflix for library card holders.  It's actually pretty cool, though.

I had a fun evening last night playing around with Hoopla! online; I created a separate account for myself via my HPL Link Card, and created an account for my mom for her FBCL card. Then I poked around and marked a lot of "favorites" for myself. Unsurprisingly, HPL's holdings in Hoopla! are slightly more robust than those of FBCL, including several more Anime titles. Most are, equally unsurprising, sub-only films, but a few are English dubs, like Ghost in the Shell 2.0. Macross Plus was described as being in English, with some of the ADR cast listed, but when I actually checked it out and started watching, it was all in Japanese. I started Ghost in the Shell 2.0 but didn't quite finish. I'll pick it up where I left off tomorrow. Maybe Macross Plus, too.

I also explored the Hoopla! music catalogs of both collections as well as the audiobook catalogs of both, too.  I bookmarked several audiobook "favorites" for possible future check-outs.

I noticed there's a lot of "cover bands" in the music section, doing renditions of more famous songs "in the style of...X" rather than the original artist. Also, there are a lot of tricky children's animated movies that seem awful close to more famous original properties from Disney, Pixar and the like...with parallel, slightly deceptive titles and artwork.  This is a little shady, but I understand why they do it.

I like the fact that, like Netflix, Hoopla! remembers where you stopped and allows you to play back from that point instead of the beginning of the video.  It would be much more frustrating if they didn't do that.  Reportedly audiobooks do the same, even across multiple check-outs on the same card.

Users are limited to a set number of check outs per 30-day period, there is no benefit for returning an item early, the embargo is still enforced to the end of the period.  For a smaller system like FBCL, our checkout limit is 5 items.  For a slightly larger system like HPL, their limit is 7.

I like that there are even a few Spanish audiobooks available.  I checked out and started listening to a Spanish translation of Sun Tsu's The Art of War ("El Arte de la Guerra").  I wish this service had existed when I was learning Spanish in the late 1990s.  Side note, Houston Atheists now have a Spanish-language meetup for Freethinkers whose primary language is Spanish...I wish *this* group had been around in the late 1990s, too...I longed to discuss philosophical concepts with someone of a more rational, non-religious mindset back then, en español.

I watched the trailer (these are demos that one may check out that don't count against one's check out limit) for a movie about The Red Baron, von Richthofen, that looked pretty good...probably better than that James Franco movie "Flyboys", about the American volunteers for the French Air Force before formal U.S. entry into WW1, that I did manage to see in theaters.  It is in English, but with German actors and their noticeable German accents.

I like that the library is extending a service like this to the less fortunate library card users among us who can't afford a monthly Netflix subscription or an iTunes account.  It is possible to access Hoopla! over the web and also on the main mobile devices like iPhone/iPad and Android and also the Kindle Fire app for Hoopla!  It's fun to explore this digital content and is much, much simpler to use than Overdrive.  It should help discourage online content piracy and encourage users to access legal, legitimate content paid for by their local library system.

One fault I find with both Overdrive and Hoopla! is that in the audiobook content, right-wing views predominate in certain select categories like economics, history, and general nonfiction.  Next is mainstream centrist views and bringing up the rear far behind are left-wing critiques of mainstream economics, politics, history, etc.  These views are either few and far between or just non-existent, especially in newer digital media.  Such views do catch up eventually over time, like in Overdrive, but in Hoopla! the right-wing view dominates to a disturbing degree.  The Conservative and Reactionary movements seem far more media and tech savvy than the Lib/Left opposition, sad to say.
They are much quicker on the draw to get their views presented and available to the eyes and ears of library users, and this is an issue of concern.