The importance of a local public library
While we have a local public library where we now live, it isn’t that great in terms of its collection and physical space, especially its children’s area. Why the library isn’t better, I don’t know, but it isn’t because of lack of a tax base or sufficient funding, or so it seems to me.
It is really important to have a good local library, especially for our children. When we lived in Indiana, the local public library in our small town was a joke. We went there once during the three years we lived there. That was it.
Yesterday we decided to go farther afield to a couple of other public libraries where we knew we could get borrowing privileges. Brinley and Cohen loved seeing their children departments and had a lot of fun playing in an environment that was inviting, full of lots of interesting and fun things to do, and set up for people just their size. The difference between these libraries and our hometown library was striking. One of the libraries we went to also has a very large collection of homeschooling materials set up in its own special room. Very nice. We came home from there with armloads of books. Brinley asked me, “How much do these books cost?” She was quite excited when I told her they are free for us to borrow, and she immediately ran around the children’s area picking out all sorts of books to check out.
One other point that became clear to me yesterday as we visited these other public libraries is how much I dislike — even resent — the vagaries of each library’s circulation policies. One library we went to won’t let reciprocal borrowers check out several kinds of materials, for instance, whereas another one had no such restrictions. Another example is the difference in checkout times for certain materials in various libraries. Our local library only allows movies to be checked out for two days, whereas the other two libraries offered much longer checkout periods. Then there is the oddness of each library’s automation system, all of which are different. Our local library doesn’t even have an automated system. While I have a bit of nostalgia for the card catalog, it is not at all useful to me when I am at home and wanting to check on the library’s collection online. One library may require their specific barcode for patron records, another library may not allow the other library’s barcode to be used, and so forth. Yes, I know, libraries have a great history of cooperation and so forth but frankly it doesn’t go far enough anymore.
