Master Class are online tutorials that are hosted by some very famous people. Neil Gaimon has one on the art of storytelling and ditto with Dan Brown who has one on writing thrillers. You might have seen Masterclass ads running on social media or YouTube, but might not have yet pulled the trigger to subscribe. There is now another alternative, the public library.
Hoopla digital, the category-creating digital service for public libraries, and MasterClass, the streaming platform where anyone can learn from the world’s best across a wide range of subjects, announced a partnership to offer select classes to participating libraries and their patrons through the hoopla digital service. As the only public library provider to offer classes from MasterClass, Hoopla will make the content available to library cardholders via its platform as the first library app with this access.
Through this partnership, more libraries and patrons will have access to the knowledge, information and inspiration from some of the world’s most recognized experts with a total of 13 classes available on Hoopla. Four classes are already available to patrons including: Gabriela Cámara Teaches Mexican Cooking; Donna Farhi Teaches Yoga Foundations; Neil Gaiman Teaches the Art of Storytelling; and Part I of Black History, Black Freedom, and Black Love taught by instructors Jelani Cobb, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Angela Davis, Sherrilyn Ifill, Nikole Hannah-Jones, John McWhorter and Cornel West.
There is no word yet on pricing for libraries for providing Master Class content for their patrons. However, I am sure collection managers can just ping their local Hoopla rep to find that out.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
