The Outcome-Driven Library: Working Together to Inspire Even the Most Reluctant of Readers

I was seven years old at my local library in Northwest Ohio when I had my first "outcome defining" moment. I was a serious kid, and a reluctant reader. I had no interest in children’s fiction. I remember standing there, probably looking a bit defiant, while a librarian patiently listened to me explain that I didn’t want a storybook.

Her response? She didn’t try to force the "standard" path on me. Instead, she walked me over to the sports section and handed me The Sporting News Almanac. In that moment, she didn’t just give me a book, she gave me permission to be the kind of reader I wanted to be. She turned a potential "no" into a life changing "yes."

As I look at the landscape of public libraries today, I see a fundamental challenge for these community institutions we love. We have moved out of an era defined by the physical footprint of the building, like the one where I was handed a book that inspired me to be a young reader, and into a digital world of limitless potential. Yet, the prevailing digital model of one copy, one user is designed to recreate the limitations of 1975.

Despite the infinite scalability of the cloud, the "Big Five" publishers have largely moved to metered licensing intended to create the kind of physical friction that customers don’t tend to see in their digital experience. When a patron discovers a title but must wait months to access it, the library has effectively said "no." And in an era defined by instant access and on-demand content, a three-month wait for a digital title creates the kind of friction that can reduce interest, erode trust in the library, and negatively impact overall reader engagement.

The "Bestseller Tax" and the Leaky Bucket

This isn’t the fault of librarians, who didn’t create the model but do have to abide by it in order to provide books to their readers. But there is a hidden inefficiency in this model that rarely gets discussed: the one-size-fits-all pricing for digital content.

Under the metered model, publishers often price every digital title as if it were a global blockbuster. Libraries are often forced to pay $60 to $90 for a license that expires after 24 checkouts or two years. This creates a "leaky bucket" effect for a library’s budget. And, unlike with physical books, libraries in the digital space aren’t building a permanent collection, they are renting one. Every two years, they pour more money into the "bucket" just to keep the same titles on the shelf.

Furthermore, when a librarian wants to support a reluctant reader (like my younger self) with a niche interest, they are forced to pay that same "bestseller premium" even though few titles become bestsellers, and most lose demand quickly. And if that niche book only circulates three times before the license expires, the cost-per-circulation becomes astronomical.

One of the most significant hurdles to modernizing the strategy for digital content in the library marketplace is that most libraries aren’t given the hard data to measure this waste. In the physical world, you can see a book gathering dust on a shelf. In the digital world, that waste is often invisible, and libraries are stuck flying blind, guessing which titles will earn their high license fee before they vanish.

This has to change. Libraries should be provided with the granular feedback loop necessary to see their true cost-per-circ by publisher and format for all metered titles. The reality is that most metered licenses wane in demand and are only getting borrowed 50% or less of their potential. But without accurate and accessible data, libraries cannot optimize.

From Collection Builder to Demand Manager

Another aspect of the digital world that isn't talked about enough is how the role of the collection librarian is fundamentally changing. In the digital realm, collection librarians aren't building a collection for the ages so much as managing demand. And this shift requires a new look at lending policies and obtaining real metrics on actual cost-per-circ on metered licenses.

At the core of the problem is that the majority of a library's digital budget is being anchored in purchasing new releases that are metered not only by lends, but also by time, usually two years. And where a library licenses an ebook for a certain number of borrows, often less than half of the lends are utilized before the time limit kicks in and the license expires.

Meanwhile, borrow and hold limits haven’t been reduced from the glory days of print. How many cardholders borrow 100 or more books per month? What percentage of the budget are they consuming?

In the digital age, with resources that are finite, the traditional collection librarian must become a strategist. Adjusting policies isn’t about restricting access, it’s about preserving access for the reluctant reader, or the busy parent who only needs one or two quality items a month. It is about moving from unlimited consumption for some to guaranteed access for all.

Empowering the Librarian

As my early childhood experience at the library taught me that the librarian is the most important piece of the puzzle. Technology and platforms are just the infrastructure. The goal of a modern digital strategy shouldn't be to replace the librarian’s intuition with an algorithm, but to provide a tool set so deep and flexible that you never have to worry about the digital shelf being empty, to return to that moment of discovery where the right content meets the right patron at the exact moment they need it.

To get there, we need to move past the artificial physical limitations now placed on our digital world, and start building together what I call the Outcome-Driven Library. One where the data is transparent, the holds and waste are minimized, and the librarian is empowered to say "yes" to every patron who walks through the door or logs onto the app.

 Jeff is President of Midwest Tape and President and Co-Founder of Hoopla, and a longtime advocate for libraries as engines of access, equity, and connection.