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hannibalheyes

How good is your library?

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Does it have enough copies of new releases etc, or do you simply buy the books you read?

 

My local library is fairly rubbish - it costs money to reserve items, and the loan period is only 3 weeks now - they shortened it from 4. Their website isn't much good either. (Worcestershire)

 

I've rejoined Birmingham libraries, and their website is amazing - you can reserve items FOC, and they come in pretty quickly - I only had to wait 3 weeks for The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, which wasn't long considering they had about 38 reservations for it before I added mine to the list!

 

How is your library service?

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Does it have enough copies of new releases etc, or do you simply buy the books you read?

 

My local library is fairly rubbish - it costs money to reserve items, and the loan period is only 3 weeks now - they shortened it from 4. Their website isn't much good either. (Worcestershire)

 

I've rejoined Birmingham libraries, and their website is amazing - you can reserve items FOC, and they come in pretty quickly - I only had to wait 3 weeks for The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, which wasn't long considering they had about 38 reservations for it before I added mine to the list!

 

How is your library service?

I just buy the books I read, having given up on my local library a long time ago. Reservations cost (but only 50p), and take more time than I have to wait and it's just not worth it, imho. It may be better for me if I joined another council area's library service but I have never bothered because I now have a TBR that I won't get through.

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I gave up on my local library years ago, as I've mentioned on BGO before, when I went in with a list of 29 titles to choose from, and found just one of them on the shelves.

The final straw was when they started stocking up on paperbacks, and storing them on wire racks so the spines weren't showing.

 

I have recently re-joined in order to borrow the occasional audiobook, but they have very few in stock, and mostly cassettes, not CDs. I can order them online from other libraries in the county, but at £2 a time I won't be doing that very often.

 

I mostly buy, or swap, 2nd hand books nowadays, and like lbmc, I have more than enough unread books in the house to see me out.

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Our village library is very small but has a good varied selection which is refreshed regularly. The children's section is very good and the boys use it a lot. I can order books and audiobooks from other libraries for no charge but I'm not sure of the process when a copy of book isn't held anywhere.

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Our library seems to have a large budget for the purchase of books, CDs, DVDs and audiobooks. They have an online facility for suggesting new material to be purchased as well as in person at the library. It helps if you can support your request with a reason for them to purchase it. I see it as a service to the community to, hopefully, introduce people to new authors, artists etc.! The only drawback can be that sometimes it can take a couple of months before they authorise the request.

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The reason libraries are starting to concentrate on Reader Development these days, rather than simply lending books, is that books are so cheap to buy that borrowing has dropped drastically over the past 10 or 20 years. We will always stock the bestsellers (which are well borrowed), but have a look at what else your library is doing. They are not simply about lending books for pleasure any more.

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our library charges more to reserve than I have to pay in many charity shops locally so generally I have a wishlist and pick things up as I see them.

However I do check there to see if things are on the shelves. It's good for general non fiction or recipe books. However they have so many random shelves for "quick picks" that it's hard to find things. It's just been re done and the emphasis is on local history, computers and audio books. However there are three large secondhand book shops here.

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My local library is great. I can always find something I want to read, it is free to reserve books and I usually get them quite quickly even when there are lots of other reservations. I also like the fact that I can reserve books online and select which branch I want to collect my book from. I like being able to return my books to any of the city libraries and not just my local one, also like that my local library is open every day.

 

Edinburgh City Council doesn't get a lot of things right i.e TRAMS, my apologies for shouting, but when it comes to their libraries they are doing a great job.

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My local library has recently been done up, it looks very modern and swish. As it's the central library, it has a good selection of books, and what you can't find in the branch you can easily order from any of the other libraries in the London Consortium (for about 30p). They also have a reasonable DVD and music selection too. My main gripe is that the new 'cafe' they have installed is less than mouthwatering! It could have been a nice coffee-shop style place to sit with a book, but is full of the smelly men reading the papers drinking lukewarm watery tea.

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I enjoy my library but there does seem to be a spatial conundrum where from the outside, the building appears to be enormous but where inside there seems to be precious little books on shelves. I suppose it's all those computer terminals and cafe taking up space.

 

I order books from the library (I can order from any library in the country). I do have pay a fee but the way I look at it is, I'd rather pay a small fee to read the books than not um read them.

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