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Do you use your local library...?


Do you use your local library?  

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  1. 1. Do you use your local library?



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As long as I can remember I have visited a local library. The library nearest to me at the moment is very small, but the ladies there are very nice and there usually is a big choice. I very rarely ask for a book to be reserved.

 

I really should stop going for a while because I have so many books on my shelves.

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I tend to visit the public library maybe a couple of times a week, whenever I think of something that I feel like looking up. I trained to be a librarian - I'm now lapsed - and I love the atmosphere of libraries. One of my clearest memories of late childhood is going into Plymouth - the nearest reasonable size city to my home town - on late night opening evenings. Dad would go to the reference part of the library, as he was doing family history research, and I would head for the ghost section and be fascinated and slightly scared by local ghost stories from Dartmoor. :D

 

I have been a university student for a couple of years now, but I have nearly finished and I know that one thing I will really miss is the library. Public libraries are great - and the one in Exeter has a great drama and music section - but an academic library has even more scope for exploration.. :)

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I love going to the library, but ours is very small. They get all the new books in, but I usually have to order them because there are so many people after 1 copy! The staff are very friendly and know me and my children really well now. My boys have their own cards and enter all the reading schemes the library do to encourage kids to read. My eldest has got 3 medals from there, and my little one is reading towards getting a teddy bear!

The only problem with going to the library is that my TBR pile keeps getting bigger instead of smaller!

 

A friend of mine used to live in London and she says their library had a cafe in it so you could have a coffee while looking at the books you were thinking of taking out! How blissful would that be :D

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The library near me just recently started opening on a Wednesday. You can forget the Weekends!

 

As I said in another thread, I got to the library and will until I'm dead...Fred.

 

There is my local one, and then there is all those South-East/Mid Essex county ones where I can reach easy enough (Southend/Chelmsford etc.).

 

One more thing I'd like to ask though, has anyone ever been to the British Library in London? And how do you go about getting books out there, I mean do they have cards?

 

I have no idea how it works, yes.

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I use the library all the time and my local one is very good. They recently closed for a month for refurbishment and I was lost without them.

 

Yeah I saw that, was the first time in ages I need to use them and they weren't open.

 

They have re-opened now though right? I mean what did they do with all the books whilst they were closed?

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After deciding I should read more I got myself a library pass a few months ago. Not for the library in my village because they have an awful selection, they probably have like 10 english books xd.

So now I have to travel 2 hours every few weeks to get the books I like, and being as impatient as I am I just got a pass without checking their selection first.

Which as it turned out was a pretty stupid thing to do because they don't have a very good selection, either that or I just read the not so popular books :D

 

The first week I decided to request a few books from another branch, but that turned out to be quite expensive. So now I'll just have to stop being so picky about the books I want to read or get them from Amazon.

I haven't decided yet whether I should renew the pass next year.

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I used to use my local library quite a lot, but kept forgetting to return my books! I tend to use it more for research/text books than ordinary reading matter.

 

The better of our two local libraries has just been closed down, despite protest and petitions...

 

Kerri

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  • 1 month later...

I'm a regular visitor to my local library. I go every Friday in my lunch hour - that's not to say that I always get books out, but if I see one I like the sound of I'll get it while I see it.

 

The main library in my town is a fairly decent sized one with smaller ones situated in different ares of the town and you can borrow books and return them to any of them, but I tend to stick to the main central library as it's within minutes of where I work so it's easier for me to get to.

 

I have to say though that it's only recently, within the last six months or so that I've noticed they seem to be getting newly published books in within weeks of them being published. Where as before you had to wait ages for them to arrive...months even.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have always always used libraries, but then thats because my parents are librarians so I've always been around libraries. My Dad's current job actually means they live in a library (literally) so for the 10 years or so before I left home I used to live in a library too!

 

I've stopped buying books for the most part as my job means I'm on contracts that can last anything from 2 months to 2 years and I tend to have to move around the country a bit (last job was in Scotland, current job in NE England, new job down in Somerset!). Libraries mean I can continue to read without adding more 'stuff' to cart around the country and I can save money. I also know that if I don't use my local library that eventually the politicians will decide to close it.

 

The other really good thing about a library is that it can (if its big enough!) give you a whole range of books to try. So in my current mood of expanding what I read the library seems the perfect place to find some of these books I want to try.

 

Ok so I'm being cheap and not supporting the author by buying it myself but sometimes you have to think about your own situation in life first.

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I used to use it more than I do now. Still, I want to revert to the older habit, now that I don't work on Wednesdays. The problem though, is that the local library in Wootton Bassett is rather small and limited in its stock. I suppose I can ask them to order a specific book for me but it can never be the same because it is always nice to browse and thumb through a book before borrowing.

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I'm sorry to hear that Oblomov.

 

Thats always going to be a problem, smaller libraries will have limited stock. For many years I've been lucky enough to have my nearest library be one of the main libraries in the area so usually have a good stock of books. Once I lived in a tiny Scottish village, the nearest library was the next village along but it was closed whilst I lived there for refurbishment and opened a few weeks before I left. For my entire time there I had to therefore get on a bus and travel to the nearest town that had a library which was half an hour away (it was also where the nearest supermarket was too). It really made me cut down on what I as reading because everytime I went to the library I was loosing the Saturday morning shopping at all the local shops :roll:

 

Anyway, now I live opposite a library (yes, I don't know how I managed it either!) and where I'm moving to next month has a pretty substantial library too so I'm really lucky. I have to admit I'm not keen on browsing too much as I keep managing to pick duds! I'm really glad I've made a 'to read' list here and I'm picking up loads of reviews because its really going to help me find books I want to read.

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I used to use it more than I do now. Still, I want to revert to the older habit, now that I don't work on Wednesdays.

Our library closes all day on a Wednesday. :) It annoys me that our council spent £millions on the Bath Spa (and where I live, we pay more council tax towards it than the residents who live in Bath do) and yet they can't 'afford' to pay to keep the library open all week. What really annoys me is that the library in the next town also closes on a Wednesday - you'd have thought they'd pick different days to close. :roll:

 

I hope your library doesn't do likewise if Wednesday is your day off.

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