Here is my lovely local library. All new and squeaky clean Fanling library

I have two libraries in the area where we live. The "main" one is about 10 minutes away by car, and has a lot more choice of books and tapes etc. But there is also a "little" one, which, very conveintly, is less than 5 minutes from my home, where I can walk to with ease. I've been going to the "little" one ever since I can remember, and on my own for at least 23 or 24 years. In fact I am in there so often, that I am sometimes mistaken as a librarian! The librarians who work there - and the main one too - are like real friends. I love my libraries!

Lovely library, ren - aand so big! My little town just has a a tiny one, but we can order books from any other little town in the province (the big cites have opted out of this plan).

I was just figuring - I have had a library card for 43 years. Even when I was young and foolish, travelling around and living hand to mouth, the first thing I would do in a new town was get a library card.

My librarians are friends, too - anyone in our family can come in, and will get all the books saved for the whole family, they know us all. I give them a big box of chocs every Christmas.

http://hip.nwpl.ca/hipres/images/HIP.png

I have been going to my library since the second day I moved here almost 30 yrs ago.

I am such a frequent patron that the staff all know my library card off by heart.

I usually cost them alot of money every month asking for new books which they almost always get for me.

They are talking about expanding it but the only way would be to build on top of the one there already.

I have had a library card since I learned to read Many Moons ago.

I know my card number better than I know my Social Security card number.LOL LOL

PF

Bless the local library in which I am sitting and typing to you right now. If it weren't for the library access, I'd have no internet as our phone line and DSL are both down because of a problem with the lines.

It's free and they even have lovely booths for us to work in.

I often use the computers at the library, if it would cause a fuss at home. Free for an hour, and then you have to make sure no one else wants on, before you can log on again. I honestly could not live in my small town without the library.

It is such a shame that so many people never find out just how entertaining and relaxing a trip to the library can be. I think it is very scary to think of just how many people here in the States have never even read one novel. Shame. Libraries are great..no words to describe their many uses.

I to spend a lot of time at the library, I find the quiet and the books are the best surroundings possible. I can read a paperback in one visit, sometimes two or three if I spend the day there. I do a fair amount of research there, and even meet friends.
In fact I am going there now.

Regards,

Tin

I used to go to the library frequently but don't bother these days. My main problem is laziness, and the fact that I tend to do most of my reading in bed and the bath and hardback books are too heavy. My poor paperbacks sometimes suffer also from being dropped in the bath! Now I just buy books.

As I think I've said in some thread here before, it would be impossible for my family to buy all the books we read - we wouldn't be able to buy groceries.
At an average price of $10 a book (even if we buy some used, new paperbacks are going for about $13- 15 these days) that would be - let me see - a conservative guess would have my family of four heavy readers spending something like $6500 dollars a year on books. And then there's books on tape, which are expensive, and hard to find used - add another $3000 at least. And that's if I can find the books I want, better factor in the cost of trips to the city to shop for books ...

I honestly don't know what I would do without the library. The federal government here is considering ending the book mail rate, and charging the same to ship books as they do for other things. If this happens, libraries will have to stop their wonderful distance lending programs, it will just become too expensive. That will leave those of us in rural areas, without access to different branches of libraries, and big cheap bookstores, in dire and real need. Any Canadians reading this, go to your local library and grab a bunch of those blue forms addressed to the Prime Minister, and send them off, protesting this. Otherwise, you may someday see a wan and wasted agony, having sucked the juice out of her own personal library (how many times can one reread "Pride and Prejudice"?) fading away to a shadow of her former self, forced to read Harlequin Romanaces from the drugstore rack.... it's a sad picture.

Living in NYC, we actually have 2 libraries within walking distance. Both are fairly small, with no comfy reading places, and never seem to have books worth reading once you hit 10 years old (mostly bad mysteries from the 80's, travel guides to obscure cities, you know...) We end up ordering all the books through the library catalogue online, which means they end up taking at least a month to end up at your branch. To go around that, I'll order 10 or 11 books at a time, and read them as they trickle in. We do the same with DVDs and CDs (except ordering 15 or 20 DVDs since they can take years to reach you, assuming they don't get lost on the way). I've resorted to my school library, which seems to have ten times more real books than both of my local libraries combined!

Agony we don't have book mail rates in the UK, and rural areas have always suffered from lack of reading material (I spent several years in a small village outside Swindon). The discovery of Project Gutenberg which allows me to get at an enormous number of books and download them to my PC free has been wonderful. I haunt libraries (who sell off old stock extremely cheaply 10p per book (about 20 cents)), second-hand bookshops and publishers clearing houses. A few months ago I was unable to buy a new book at full price because I hadn't bought one for such a long time. Libraries are one of the necessities of any community, perhaps you could start a local 'book exchange' with your neighbours.

Regards,

Tin

I frequent the public library in my town. And the best thing ever is the electronic card catalog online that I can search libraries in the county and request books online.

And I don't know what I'd do without the school library. I constantly go in there at break times and after school to read.