Jill Schramm/MDN Jaxon Unruh, right, shows the book he picked out at the Friends of the Library book sale July 10 to Friends of the Library volunteer Mary Heit. The organization supports Minot Public Library, including financially through its book sale events.

The growing popularity of digital library materials is changing the way Minot Public Library serves its patrons. However, rising costs to provide digital content and uncertain funding to pay for it already have required the library to scale back.

Library Director Zhaina Moya said many libraries across the country are in the same situation.

“A lot of them are losing funding. And so, they’re looking at what makes sense for us to still cover. What are our core services? What are the priorities?” she said.

The North Dakota State Library funds a digital service called Libby, or Overdrive, for the state’s libraries. Participating libraries also put in money, which is about $6,000 a year for Minot Public Library (MPL). MPL patrons then are able to access that service through the local library.

Additionally, Moya said, MPL has been contributing extra to purchase copies of new releases, which gives its patrons first access to those books.

MPL also subscribes to a service called Hoopla to give patrons digital access to more materials. The library only pays when patrons check out materials, but as patrons have signed up at a higher rate than expected, the library’s coffers are under strain.

“Already, for this year, just in the last month, we had to go in and put some price caps on certain books. Any audio book that is going to cost us more than -say, $2.99 – our patrons no longer have access to, which has been frustrating for some people,” Moya said.

The hope is to get through the rest of 2025 without imposing additional price caps or limiting the number of borrows per month beyond the current six per patron, she said.

“It’s been hard to keep up financially with the demand, even though this is really what we’re seeing more of – that people really want. We even have digital-only cards. We have several people who just have a library card for access to these resources,” she said.

MPL has been shifting money from physical purchases to digital services over the past three budget cycles and has exhausted the ability to continue doing so, Moya said.

As the library looks at where future funds will come from, Moya notes libraries already have been informed a platform for learning new languages and a service that provides book recommendations no longer will be federally funded.

MPL’s state and federal aid typically totals about $40,000-$50,000 annually, or just around 2% of the overall budget.

“But when you are a library who is making do with everything you can, that $50,000 is impactful,” Moya said.

“We have very little revenue as a library,” she added. “We are mostly funded by property tax.”

The state’s 3% limit on tax increases adds another constraint, as has become evident during the ongoing 2026 budget process.

“The only scenario in which we were able to keep and fund Hoopla to the level that we needed it to be would be to let a full time staff person go,” Moya said.

She said the library cannot cut staff without impacting programming, which is another high priority service. MPL has seen growth in demand for programming at all age levels. For instance, several years ago, the library had a couple of adult programs with minimal participants, and now the library has several programs and they are at maximum capacity.

Moya said Hoopla understands the situation of libraries and has been trying to address the underlying issue of publisher pricing.

She also acknowledged the tough budgeting choices the city council will need to make, which is why budget prioritization is important.

A choice needs to be made and “either way, the community is going to feel it,” Moya said.

The community can help by joining the local Friends of the Library organization, Moya said. MPL has been able to boost its budget for Hoopla by $15,000 this year, thanks to a gift from the nonprofit Friends of the Library. Anyone willing to volunteer or share ideas for fundraising is invited to get involved, she said.

“I think a lot of libraries are going to be looking at their Friends of the Library to try to step up and fill some of these gaps moving forward. We are definitely going to be leaning on them quite a bit,” she said.