Evaluating donated books for possible inclusion in the collection takes hours of staff time. Even if you are donating recent usable books, many many people use library donations as a way to purge all the useless crap from their houses - books with pages missing, books with food spills or mold or mildew (which need to be kept FAR away from other books), PASCAL programming books, VHS tapes of bootlegged HBO movies, etc. With no staff time available to evaluate donations, it’s often best to refuse them altogether.
Organizing book sales takes human effort. A library without staff hours to devote to the activity, or without a decent Friends organization to take over the work, may not the ability to organize a fundraising book sale.
Coming back to #1 - the useless crap that a lot of people donate has to be discarded, which may cost the library money. Goodwill and Salvation Army deal with this all the time. Some of their valuable funds have to go to paying to have the crap hauled away.
Some people get really offended when their donated items don’t end up in the collection. Sometimes it’s better to just not take anything at all.
I would like to take a moment to thank my local library, which has recently started emailing me notices warning me that my books are about to become overdue. I can usually renew them online quickly. Those two things together are wonderful.
I love my library!
Right now, though, I had to start a series at book 2 because they didn’t have book 1.
A few months ago I was reading a series and they were missing one somewhere in the middle. I had the funds available at the time so I purchased the missing book and after I read it I donated it to the library. What was I gonna do with book 4, ya know?
We have an organisation, Friends of the Library or some such, that organises the used book sale, they have it a couple times a year. Last time I went I had to get help carrying my books to the car
My library also has a website. I spend a lot of time at work browsing the catalog. You can put books on hold, they’ll pull em off the shelves and hold them at the front desk for you.
Well, it’s YOUR Library – your taxes pay for it – so treat it like it’s yours.
You wouldn’t permit a kid to throw a tantrum in your house without doing something about it. Nor people talking on cell phones when it isn’t permitted. If the librarians won’t protect this public property, then members of the public have to step up and protect it.
The next time someone answers their cell phone in the library, say “Sir, that isn’t permitted here.” And just keep repeating “Sir, you can’t do that here”,
Sir, please take your cell phone outside the library", getting closer to him so he hears and getting louder as needed, until he responds. And don’t be surprised if other library patrons join you in reminding him of the rules. Peer pressure is a very effective way of enforcing the agreed-upon standards of behavior in public places. So do your part in reminding people when they are misbehaving. A finger to the lips and a loud “Shuussh” are quite effective when people are too loud.
Then complain to their bosses. Your taxes pay their salary, and there is no point to paying people who are “useless”. There are plenty of people looking for jobs right now, who would be glad to work hard in a nice library setting.
And a mother whose child is constantly crying & throwing a tantrum, every day? – Something is wrong there. Why haven’t you called Child Protection about this?
And this, unfortunately, is the problem upon which all the others rest. It’s tempting to complain about the bad behavior, but the sad fact is that people in public will behave like inconsiderate louts unless actively discouraged from doing so, whether by physical barrier or enforcement (preferably by someone with a badge and gun) because nobody gives a shit about anyone else anymore. If I leave my house or car unlocked (or even unattended for a long time), I will only be surprised if someone doesn’t steal from it. Unless it has just been cleaned, I fully expect busy public restrooms to have urine-soaked (if not shit-smeared) seats and walls, and for the floor to be littered with wads of wet paper. I expect restaurants, libraries, grocery stores, etc. to have at least one wailing and/or rampaging child being ignored by his keeper(s). I expect to see garbage strewn around parking lots and bus stations, often within a few feet of an ignored garbage can.
Some might call this a cynical outlook, and the saddest thing is I might’ve once agreed.
Obviously, someone found it and called the library.
Ours in the suburb is good, they eject loud teens whenever they get loud or even stand by one of their friends whose online.
Downtown, some ill people go. Not long ago there was an incedent of someone hitting a patron on the head with a rock.
When I worked in a local library system, we had a situation with working parents telling their children to go to the library until they got off work and could come pick them up. Generally the children were well-behaved; when they weren’t, their parents were informed that they would be barred from the library. The bad behavior usually stopped. Sometimes the parents wouldn’t make it to the library before closing time (which most week days was 8:00 p.m.) and the police would have to be called.
We also had elderly people left at the library by families who had no one to stay with them during the work day. They figured that, at the library, at least someone would have to call an ambulance in an emergency. Several times we had elderly men and women fall. On one occasion a woman’s family arrived a half hour after closing time, became furious with us because we had already locked the doors and turned out most of the lights, and threatened to sue when the librarian told them they would have to make other arrangements for the woman’s care. For that matter, homeless men often threatened to sue when told they couldn’t sleep in the library. Apparently they had trouble understanding that “the right to use the library” only meant the right to use the library as a library and not as a flophouse.
The saddest case? One night a staffer found a homeless woman in the bathroom trying to diaper her baby with paper towels. We took up a collection from the staff and some of the patrons to buy her a box of disposables and the librarian got a local Catholic church to send a social worker over to see what could be done for her.
Books and videos thrown at staff by angry patrons was routine. There were several arrests. White staffers were frequently accused of racism when they were only trying to enforce the rules. Once the police had to be called when a man got angry because he wasn’t allowed to check out more than his limit of videos and stayed in the parking lot for hours, threatening to attack the librarian when she left the building.
I love our library too. There was a book I wanted to read, a new sci-fi release, but they didn’t have it. So they bought it when I asked about it!!! Yay!
There’s a great Friends organization, so you can donate anything. What isn’t needed and is thrown away goes to a recycling business that comes once a week to pick it up.
Hint: Your library doesn’t need twenty year old medical textbooks, Reader’s Digest Condensed books, or partially colored in coloring books for kids. Most old magazines get tossed too, and a lot of the religious stuff, although some of the latter is kept if it’s in really good shape. There’s a bookstore in the library, and an annual sale that brings in big bucks.
I have my current job because of the library. When it was rebuilt in 2001-2, a cafe was included. It’s operated as a seperate business, and I’m the baker. I’m typing this reply on break, on a library computer, of which there are many.
A tip for Goodreads users, you can set up your Goodreads account so that you can search for books in your library’s system directly from Goodreads. I will sometimes find a book on Amazon, click my link to take me to that book on Goodreads, then click my link to take me to that book in my library’s system. It’s a great easy way to track books down.
I love my local Manhattan and Brooklyn libraries! Free books and magazines, free internet and computer usage, wi-fi, etc.
They do have some problems though. Brooklyn librarians don’t admonish loud people (teens included) or stand-behinders unless they’re particularly boisterous or people complain. Apparently, they consider it a “no-shush” zone.
Although they don’t have “no phone calls” signs in the Brooklyn system (Manhattan does (separate system)), they will ask phone-talkers to go out into the vestibule.
I consider the computer/internet area a reading room and believe is should be pretty quiet. I will let the librarian know (and they will respond to the complaint) if people are on the phone or their music is too loud.
If I can hear your music from several feet away through you ear plugs or phone, it’s too loud and you’re making yourself deaf. Or perhaps you’re going deaf already and that’s why it’s so loud. One guy goes so far as to play music through headphones but instead of placing them on his ears, he puts them on the desk and turns up the volume loud enough to hear. Uhm, wouldn’t it then be called a speaker, guy?
See also Jolly Roger’sThis Shit Has Got To Stop thread re car speaker noise in the Pit.
The nickel-and-dime’ing at my local library does annoys me so much, I’ve tossed out thier begging letters. I used to donate to thier programs. I know I should again, but I don’t.
See, I don’t know about that. They found my wallet and called the library to let them know my card was lost but didn’t turn it in or call Visa or Discover or Duane Reade and let them know I lost those cards too? That would have to be a pretty concientious thief who called to replace my cards as long as they had no use for them.
Another Kansan here, and I’ve got to agree. Topeka has an excellent library. Much better than you’d expect for a city this size. And I’ve eaten in the library cafe many times. Good food!
I’m incredibly lucky to live here in Pittsburgh, home of Andrew Carnegie, so of course, we have the Carnegie Library system. I absolutely love love love my library-I’m always doing interlibrary requests, and I can go to any branch library and check out a book.
Those of you with shitty libraries-you have my major sympathies. Write to your local politicians-whoever would be in charge of improving the libraries in your area. Maybe try to get a local campaign going to do so?
My Lawrenceburg Indiana Library is kickass. Casino money certainly helps. Now if I could only limit my checkouts in order to keep from paying the damn late fees!
Seriously, I’m like a kid in a candy store and I overestimate not only my ability to read quickly, but how much TIME I can actually allocate myself to reading, what with kids, wife and all.
I have defenitely supported my library with mucho dinero in late fees!
I love my library, too. They buy books when you suggest them. They hold books they think we might like without us requesting them! They have a great story hour (sorry, love preschool age story hour in our library.) The librarians are nice and helpful.
But they don’t keep a quiet library. It’s never overly loud, but even the libarians talk in a normal speaking volume. No whispering. It’s in a small building in a small town. I think of it as more of a family library than a study library. I don’t think anyone actually goes there for peace and quiet unless they show up after 1pm and leave before school gets out at 3pm.
Thanks to parents not controlling their children, teenagers with no where else to hang out and the ‘media center’ that’s really a free arcade for high schoolers my library has a ‘reading room’ a quiet place where you can go and read IN THE LIBRARY!
There are always three staff members on duty and our new self checkout system means besides putting books away they do fuck all.
The branch of my library nearest to my place does kind of suck. It has about 6 books and a couple dozen movies all in spanish. It seems like it is more of a internet cafe but I kind of understand that. I can hop on the subway downtown and get whatever books I like at their central location without being bothered by 40 13 year olds who want to be on facebook all day.
