My garage door opener fell apart the other day and I called Sears to come and fix it. The repairman was telling me how he likes to read and some of the books he'd just read. He said it was too bad he couldn't use our library because he lives in Perry. Of course, this is always a tender subject for non-residents and for our library staff. It is one of our hardest chores, telling someone that they live out of the city limits (even though their address does say Brigham City sometimes), and that it will cost a fee of $60 a year for their family to use our library. We wish we didn't have to give people that bad news. People standing at the front desk eager to read and use our library, will frown and sputter, and leave our library mad, or sad, or downcast when they learn of the fee. Some, however, love reading and using the library so much, they realize that month by month, $60 is not so much for the number of books and other items they can use. This was brought home to me even more this morning when I was reading the September issue of Family Circle. They had an article on saving money that listed the following websites where you can borrow books besides your local library. I'm sure people are willing to pay the fees to get books from these sites without thinking twice about it.
http://www.booksfree.com/ For $11 a month you can borrow 2 paperback books at a time and the shipping is free. Let's see, $11 times 12 months equals $132 a year for 24 paperback books.
http://www.americasbookshelf.com/ Cost $12 a year for a membership and you can swap books with other people. The shipping is included in that $12 fee but you pay $3.50 for each book you borrow. If you only borrowed one book a month - that would be $42.
http://bookmooch.com/ With this one, you mail someone a book and you pay for the shipping. It is possible to earn points which can be redeemed to get your own book. The smallest book we mail on interlibrary loan costs $2.75 for postage - so postage could add up.
http://www.betterworldbooks.com/ You can purchase gently used books here - proceeds help promote global literacy. You're doing a good thing here, but it still costs you money.
Susan
1 comment:
You pay $2.75 in shipping for the smallest inter-library loan and you still only charge us $2.50, no matter the size. How nice. That break down of pricing really puts the $60 non-resident fee or resident property taxes that go to the library into perspective. We really do get a lot for our money.
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