What to Know:

• A library card can give you free access to eBooks, audiobooks, movies, music, magazines, and other digital entertainment.

• Libraries pay to provide that content – often through licenses that can limit how long or how many times a digital title can be borrowed.

• Before paying for another subscription, eBook, audiobook, or digital rental, see if your library already offers it.

As summer winds down and Florida FINALLY starts to cool off, I find myself on a bit of a nostalgia kick. Last week, I wrote about how some people are turning their backs on streaming services and starting to buy physical media again. A few weeks ago, it was the do-it-yourself economy, harkening back to the days of tackling jobs on our own time instead of hiring someone else to do them.

The running theme as of late seems to be a return to old school as “everything old is new again.” Which slots right in with today’s Dollars & Sense: libraries.

Quick show of hands – who can remember the last time they stepped into a library? If you have kids it might not have been too long ago. If you’re a millennial or Gen Z, it’s been a few years, probably not since college. If you’re Gen X or a Boomer, you probably haven’t seen the inside of a library this century.

We can’t start off this story with a headline like “Libraries Are Back!” because, they kinda never went away. For decades, not much has changed as libraries have continued as community pillars across the U.S. What has changed is what you can find inside of them. That same library card that always got you a book from the shelf, magazine from a rack, or the last week of a daily newspaper, can now unlock eBooks, audiobooks, movies, music, and even streaming services. Better still, you can access all of this content without ever leaving the couch.

Your library, without the library

While the rest of us were busy signing up for one digital subscription after another – I’m looking at you, Netflix, Audible, and Spotify – public libraries quietly went digital. They carry a lot of the same content, but without another monthly bill. And there’s a decent chance you’re already paying for access – whether you use it or not.

So, how does it work?

Well, public libraries subscribe to different digital services and set their own borrowing limits. Here are the six names worth knowing: Libby, Hoopla, Kanopy, PressReader, Freegal Music, and Freading.

• Think of Libby as the digital version of the library bookshelf. You borrow eBooks, audiobooks, and magazines using your library card. Popular titles can have waiting lists, just like their physical counterparts.

• Hoopla casts a much wider net. Depending on your library, it can offer eBooks and audiobooks alongside movies, television shows, music, comics, and other digital content. Many titles are available instantly, although libraries generally limit how many items patrons can borrow each month.

• Then there’s Kanopy, which looks and feels more like a traditional streaming service. Its catalog emphasizes movies, documentaries, independent films, classics, and educational programming – again, available through participating libraries.

• PressReader specifically concentrates on magazines and newspapers, with a sprinkling of book titles also available.

• Freegal Music is a portal for all types of music that can be downloaded or streamed. Its collection spans some 15 million+ songs in over 200 different genres. 

• Freading is an eBook-specific lending service also available through local libraries. 

One thing to note: both Libby and Kanopy are owned by OverDrive, a private company that says it works with over 92,000 schools, colleges, and libraries in over 115 countries to lend digital content. Libby is the public-library eBooks/audiobooks arm, while Kanopy is for streaming video.

Orange County’s libraries subscribe to all six of these services and cardholders are clearly taking advantage. In March alone, OCLS patrons checked out 379,105 digital items – an average of 12,229 items a day. Digital items accounted for 54% of everything checked out by the library system that month.

For patrons, that’s a lot of books, movies, music, and other content without another monthly subscription showing up on a credit card statement. For the library, however, every one of those digital offerings comes at a cost.

Because free isn’t exactly free

Of course, all of this digital content isn’t really free. You may not pay when you borrow something, but your library does. Just as libraries have traditionally spent money buying books, newspapers, magazines, DVDs, and other materials for their shelves, they now spend part of their collection budgets on digital content.

The difference: digital content can be considerably more complicated than buying a book and lending it out.

Here’s how it works: libraries generally don’t own the eBooks, audiobooks, and streaming movies they offer. Instead, they license access to them through companies such as OverDrive (Libby and Kanopy) and Hoopla. How libraries pay for that licensing can vary considerably.

• Some digital titles work much like traditional library books: the library licenses a certain number of copies, and only that many people can borrow them at once. If a library has five copies of John Grisham’s latest book, only five downloads are available at a time.

• Other licenses may expire after a certain amount of time or number of checkouts. Let’s take that same Grisham book: if a library has 100 checkouts, once that book is loaned out for the one-hundredth time, it won’t be available again unless the library re-ups the agreement with the publisher.

• Still others operate on a pay-per-use model, with the library charged when a patron actually borrows, watches, or listens to content.

These scenarios help explain some of the quirks of digital borrowing. It’s also why you may have to wait several weeks to borrow an eBook even though there’s no physical book to run out of, why one title may be available instantly while another isn’t, and why libraries sometimes limit the number of digital items you can borrow each month.

Here in Orange County, licensing costs are already having an impact on who gets access, but not in the way you might think.

OCLS used to offer something called a “fee card” to people who lived outside its service area but still wanted access to the library system. For FY 2025–26, OCLS budgeted $150,000 in fee-card revenue but had already collected $166,600 through April. That additional revenue, however, came with additional costs: OCLS says fee-card holders’ use of digital materials contributed to longer wait times for people who live within the library’s service area. They added that the fees being charged didn’t cover the cost of the digital materials those cardholders used.

So – beginning on July 31, 2026, OCLS stopped selling or renewing the cards. Existing cards remained valid until they expired. It’s a real-world example of how “free” digital borrowing can become increasingly expensive as more people use it. By the way, getting a fee card wasn’t cheap ($125 a year), but even at that price,

OCLS says the fee wasn’t enough to cover the cost of the digital materials those cardholders used. Even if the library increased the fee, OCLS says, the growing number of fee-card users put a strain on the system. OCLS told News 6 that the library’s mission is to serve the residents who pay taxes to support it, not to provide a fee-based service to those living outside Orange County.

The true cost of digital

One would think acquiring the rights and lending out a digital copy of a book, movie, or record would be cheaper and easier than the old system of passing physical copies back and forth.

Not necessarily. In fact, digital content can sometimes cost a library considerably more than physical media.

Unlike a book or DVD that a library can buy once and lend until it wears out, some digital licenses expire after a certain amount of time or number of checkouts. This forces libraries to essentially buy the same book again if they want to keep offering it.

Last year, The Denver Post published a story about digital library collections that detailed some real-world costs of physical versus digital media. The newspaper looked at what Jefferson County Public Library in Colorado spent to make Rebecca Yarros’ “Onyx Storm” available to patrons.

For 166 print copies of “Onyx Storm,” the county spent $3,300. For the eBook version, the county spent $22,000 for 360 eBook licenses. The breakdown: each physical copy cost a little less than $20, but each digital license cost a little more than $61. “Onyx Storm” is an example of a bigger trend in digital licensing: over the five years from 2019 to 2024, Jefferson County spent $4.1 million on e-books and audiobooks.

Why so much for digital?

So, why can an eBook license cost a library so much more than the same book sitting on a shelf? Part of the answer comes down to three words most consumers have probably never heard of: first-sale doctrine.

The first-sale doctrine is a longstanding part of U.S. copyright law that essentially says once you legally purchase a physical copy of something, the copyright holder generally loses the right to control what happens to that particular copy. Buy a book and you can read it, give it to a friend, sell it at a garage sale, or donate it to a library. And if a library buys that book, it can lend the same copy again and again without paying the publisher every time someone checks it out.

That’s the traditional library model. Digital content licensing, however, changes the equation.

Libraries generally aren’t buying eBooks in the same sense that they buy physical books. Instead, they enter into licensing agreements with publishers and digital platforms that spell out exactly what the library can do with the content. As explained earlier, that license might last two years while another might allow a certain number of checkouts. Some may limit how many people can borrow a title simultaneously. But here’s the important thing: when those rights expire, the library may have to pay again if it wants to keep that title in its digital collection.

In other words, a physical book purchased by a library can theoretically remain on the shelf and circulate until it falls apart. An eBook, however, will never lose a page, crack a spine, or get dropped in the bathtub, but its license can still expire. Think of buying a car versus leasing one, except in this scenario, not only is leasing more expensive, but at the end of the term you’re still left with nothing. Pay more, own less.

So, why would any library agree to this system? Because, at the end of the day, “buying the car” simply isn’t an option.

Libraries license the content under licensing terms established by publishers and use intermediary companies like OverDrive and Hoopla to provide the infrastructure needed to distribute the content because that infrastructure includes everything from authenticating library cards and managing checkouts, to waiting lists and controlling access when a loan expires. In essence, libraries aren’t simply paying for a digital file; they’re paying for access to an entire digital lending ecosystem.

And increasingly, some libraries say they’re paying too much.

The pushback

Earlier this year, five major library organizations – the Urban Libraries Council, Public Library Association, Canadian Urban Libraries Council, Chief Officers of State Library Agencies, and Association for Rural & Small Libraries – jointly called for changes to the way digital content is priced and licensed. Their argument: the current system is becoming increasingly difficult for libraries to afford.

Changes library advocates have pushed for include more flexible licensing terms, greater transparency in pricing, and more options that would allow libraries to stretch their digital collection budgets further. They also want publishers to offer permanent-access licenses – essentially giving libraries the ability to buy and keep some digital titles instead of continually paying to renew access.

The biggest concern of libraries? What happens if nothing changes.

As more reading, listening, and viewing shifts from physical to digital media, libraries have to devote bigger parts of their budgets to content they may never actually own. And that can leave libraries with an uncomfortable choice: spend more money maintaining access to their existing digital collections or use that money to add something new.

All of this creates a complicated and increasingly expensive balancing act. For library patrons, however, the equation is considerably simpler.

Licensing agreements, digital platforms, borrowing limits, and negotiations happen largely behind the scenes. What shows up on your phone, tablet, computer, or television is access to an enormous collection of digital content without another recurring charge showing up on your credit card statement.

And that brings us back to where we started: the library may be old school, but there’s nothing particularly old-fashioned about what your library card can do.

The point isn’t that your library card can replace Netflix, Spotify, Audible, Kindle, and every other digital service you use. It probably can’t. But before spending $15 on an eBook, $20 on an audiobook, or $5 to rent a movie, it costs you nothing to check the library first. You might be surprised by what’s already on the shelf – even when there isn’t a shelf.