Count me in with those that wouldn’t pay anything. At least not so long as they receive any taxpayer funding and keep really shitty hours. Closing at 5pm on Friday and Sunday and not being open at all on Saturday?
I just got a Donor Plus card from my local library. It was $50 a year for our household, and it seems worth it because right now our libraries are looking at even more staff layoffs, service cuts, restricted opening hours and more because funding is drying up. The people who need and use the library the most in my area are the people who can least afford to pay to use it. We had the cash, so it seemed the right thing to do.
It’s the cuts in taxpayer funding that almost all library systems have faced in recent years that keep them from having expanded hours. My local library branch went from being open 38 hours a week over five days to being open 35 hours a week over five days and we may lose another full day and fall to 28 hours a week because of yet another budget impasse on the state level. If you could pay for services at your library, you’d likely see hours and/or services increased.
I’d pay 20 a year but no more and ONLY if I had some input in the choice of books. Our libraries in Memphis are sorely lacking in quality books. I don’t care about movies and music. That’s what the internet’s for. And they have row after row of computers if that’s what you’re after!
Well I wasn’t suggesting that we pay for public libraries, I was more interested in hearing what your library card is worth to you. The value to you is much different if you use it a lot or don’t use it at all.
Or if you have a dinky little library it may not be worth it at all. It still surprises people how much the Chicago Public Library will do for you. People don’t know what services they have and when I tell them they are amazed.
$200 dollars! How late were they? No offense, but it’s not the library’s fault that you forgot to return your books.
(The most I ever had to pay was about $10 – and that was because I had some many books – it’s usually a quarter per book, for each day they’re late. :smack:)
How much would I pay? God, I can’t even imagine – I just came back today with a whole stack of books. I’d say $100-200 sounds about right. But then, my library rocks.
Looks up LA Public Library. Looks like you get a book for three weeks, and then it’s 35 cents for each day it’s late. Here at the ACLA, we get a book for two weeks, and it’s 25 cents for every day it’s late. Hardly what I’d consider “outrageous”.
I wouldn’t pay a lot. Maybe $50/year.
I get 2-3 books a month from the library. Buying those books would add up to much more than $50/year, but if the library cost more, I’d just switch to other sources for entertainment. I could borrow books from friends, read free content online, or get cheap books from thrift stores.
I used to try to get movies from the library, but they’re so often in poor condition that I gave up on it. I’d rather pay Netflix and get a movie that doesn’t look like someone ran it past a belt sander.
The library I walked to after school in the '80s was open about 56 hours a week.
We have a great system here in Georgia that addresses the above problem.
almost all the libraries in the state are linked up online. you can search for a book on an easy-to-use website and click on a book you want. it’s then sent to the library of your choice from the first library that sees the request and has a book that fits it.
usually takes 2 to 5 days to get the book if it’s available. i’ve gotten some overnight.
I lost them for a long enough time that, by the time I found them, they had marked them as lost and were charging me for the books. Except they had the paperback books I had listed as hard covers and they quoted me some crazy price.
I can afford $100 a year. Some of my neighbors can’t. Good thing I live where there’s a great public library system. I like that some of my tax dollars goes to making sure everybody can use wonderful library.
Now you’ve got me thinking. I’m sure you can donate some bucks to the library. I’m going to see if I can do that.
I’d pay $50 easily, maybe $100. There are times when I don’t get anything for months and then times when I’d get 7 DVDs and a stack of books in one go, so it depends. I use the New York Public Library and it’s amazing. There are over 80 branches and you can request anything from any one of those (except the research libraries) using their comprehensive website and pick it up at your local branch. The Mid-Manhattan library on 5th Ave is open 7 days a week, and til 11pm on Mon-Thurs!
I used to pay $20 a year for a library card at the large metro area nearest to where I lived. My local library was free, the library near where I work is free but the third one charged a fee for membership if you didn’t live or work within the council area. Seemed fair enough to me.
I check out 60 or 70 books a year, so I’d probably pay $200/year.
But part of that is because I have such a good local system. My local library is open 66 hours a week (only 62 hours in the summer!) and regularly buys pretty much everything that I want to read. Plus, all the county libraries are linked, so I can get anything from the 30 or so nearby libraries shipped to my local branch.
One thing that is kind of annoying is that different branches have different late charges. Mine charges .20/day, but some are as low as .05/day! Also, one branch has a four-week loan period (instead of the usual three).
Our library charges $35 a year for a non-resident card. They have people falling all over themselves to do it and it’s a dinky small town library. But it’s a library like I’ve never seen. The librarians are so helpful and friendly. They are always visiting at the desk with someone and keep track of frequent patrons reading tastes so they can recommend a book. I’ve had them hold more than one book for me that I didn’t ask for because they knew I’d love it. 
They celebrate when you have more than 50 books checked out at a time. (Pretty easy to do in my family.) They call us “Super Duper Patrons!” now. They are happy to buy a book if you ask for it. They also have an amazing amount of childrens programs, especially in the summer time.
Right now I’m helping the library promote a bond election that would cost me about $10 more a year in taxes. I’m excited for the opportunity because I think that $10 a year is going to get me at least $200 worth of value. It will pay for an expansion that will more than double the size of the library with lots of wonderful improvements to the existing structure as well, including bringing the building into full ADA compliance. (It was last remodeled in 1967 with some minor fixes more recently to help with accessibility but it’s got a lot that needs to be done.)
Anyway, what would I pay? Right now I’m paying with several hours a week of my time as I work to help make the library better. I love our library!
I belong to a private library. The yearly fee is $225 which I consider a bargain given how much I use their services. I would drop 10x that in a heartbeat to be a member…it’s a barrier between me and all the hygienically challenged people who populate public libraries.
It’s gone up to 30 cents a day, as I learned this week. 
Still a bargain compared to the cost of purchasing books, even if you sell them afterward, or doing BookCrossing or something.
My local library had greater hours in the 80s as well. Libraries haven’t been high priority for funding for a very long time because they’re believed to be – wrongly – the refuge of poor folks who have little political savvy and even less political say. No politician runs on a pro-library platform. It’s just not on their radar.
And this is a black mark against the library how, exactly?
If they can’t keep as many hours, than close on monday or something, not saturday which is the only possible day for many people, and instead of closing at ridiculously early hours like 5, maybe freaking open later in the day instead. Close in the morning when most people are at work and not coming to the library anyway.
Want to bet? We have a line for the computers a mile long when we open at 9. A lot of people are out of work, you know.
It is possible for a politician to win on a pro-library library. For example, my current Town Supervisor won the position after one of her campaign promises was “I won’t dick over the library like the previous administration did.”
But that would just inconvenience the people that come on Monday or in the morning. One thing some library users don’t realize is that most libraries are busy all the time. They’re under the mistaken impression that no one comes in before 5 (because everyone’s working) and that Saturday is the only day people come in (Saturday is popular, but my library is closed on Saturdays in the Summer because few people would come in even if we were open, it’s just too nice out).
If you had paperback books and they were listed as hardcovers, yeah, that’s a little weird. However, it’s not their fault you lost them, and they were right to charge you the cost of the books, as well as the late fees you incurred. Blaming the library for your own lack of responsibility is ridiculous.
:rolleyes: