Local library

THIRZAH

I use the library and buy books from charity shops. I also have a kindle and often buy a 99p "daily deal".My DD1 and I like the same authors so if I see a book by one of our favourite authors in a charity shop I'll buy it and then pass it on to her when I've read it.

Most of the books in our library are hardbacks so too heavy to take on holiday .Even if I'm just going out for the day I often put a paperback or my kindle in my bag .

jackyann

I think most surveys of people who read a a lot show that they get books from a variety of places, and that is certainly my experience.
I only buy new for gifts, but I buy secondhand, use my library, share among friends, and use a kindle; depends on the author / publisher which is better available.

GreyQueen

jackyann wrote: »

I think most surveys of people who read a a lot show that they get books from a variety of places, and that is certainly my experience.
I only buy new for gifts, but I buy secondhand, use my library, share among friends, and use a kindle; depends on the author / publisher which is better available.

Agreed. ^

If I want to read a particular book, I will check first to see if it's in the library system. Often, it isn't. My local library is the central one in a middling-sized city and I am in and out of there at least once a week.

Observations; the fee for reserving books not in branch is well above what many charity shops charge for books in my area, sometimes double or triple. Thus, if I want it and I see it for pennies, I am likely to buy it. It mostly gets offered onwards to family/ friends who might be interested. If they aren't, it gets re-donated immediately by me or read by them and re-donated in another town across the region.

My library has an irritating habit of splitting series across the county, so you read one of them and find all the others have to be ordered in from up to 40 miles away. If the system only runs to one copy of each installment of a series by a best-selling author, and sprinkles them around the region, I feel its a cynical money-making ploy.

Despite being very heavily used, my library has lost staff to self-checkout machines and suffered a reduction in opening hours. It also can be made a deeply unpleasant place to visit by teens running amok (interventions have had to be made at management level to get security involved), by the mentally-ill behaving in frightening ways and by the presence of screaming babies at flinch-inducing volumes in an echoing environment. I've seen plenty of adults like myself, obviously afflicted with sensitive hearing, leave abruptly because of the screaming infants.

The library won't accept donations of books more than three years old and I've been frustrated and disbelieving to see, only a couple of months after I've paid to reserve certain titles and waited some time for other readers to have finished with them, that they're being offered (in undamaged condition!) in the library book sale only slightly more than the res fee.

I love my library and use it for the majority of the 100 + books I read each year, but it isn't a substitute for charity-shop book-buying.

t14cy_t

I'm blessed with 3 very good libraries here on the isle of Sheppey. all are well used and I'm always in there! the staff are always so friendly too. xx

Cappella

Despite protests, and petitions, most of the local branch libraries have been closed by the appalling council in my local area. It now costs me £4.50 to get the bus to my nearest public library which is over 3 miles away.
Ultimately many more libraries will close, as the last thing any government wants is an educated, literate population.
It's library closures that we should all be protesting about. I agree with the OP. If more people used libraries instead of CS perphaps some of us would still have libraries within walking distance.

Caterina

I echo others here, getting my books in a variety of places. I love the library and use it regularly but if I see a good reference book in a charity shop, which I want to keep, it makes sense buying it.

I often worry about the future of libraries now that so many people use electronic devices to read. I love the smell, feel and texture of real books but can see that this is not the case for many people, who prefer the practicality of carrying hundreds of books in a Kindle. With more and more people opting for this way of reading I fear for the future of books.

Pollycat

Cappella wrote: »

Despite protests, and petitions, most of the local branch libraries have been closed by the appalling council in my local area. It now costs me £4.50 to get the bus to my nearest public library which is over 3 miles away.
Ultimately many more libraries will close, as the last thing any government wants is an educated, literate population.
It's library closures that we should all be protesting about. I agree with the OP. If more people used libraries instead of CS perphaps some of us would still have libraries within walking distance.

Quite a few of the replies indicate that people who buy books from charity shops also use their local libraries.
Maybe the OP should be looking at those people who don't read at all whose lack of use of their public libraries is more likely to result in closures.

[Deleted User]

We still have a small library in the local shopping centre which I use but I also buy second hand books from many sources because the library has very few 'new' books in these days, not new as in just from the publisher and the latest one in a series but the stock doesn't seem to change and I've read most of what they have from the authors I like. Charity shops and boot fairs are the cheapest sources of used paperbacks and cookery books so I sell surpluses at boot fairs and donate to the charity shops when I've finished with books here. It works and hopefully the library will survive but I can understand why they have restraints on obtaining new material and also why people will stop using libraries if they have already read those books which appeal to them and nothing new is available.

SallySunshine

I use my local library, use my Kindle and buy from charity shops and boot-sales.
also discovered Borrowbook using my library card to download a huge catalogue of books, best sellers etc, books can be ordered in advance, you can have up to 4 books on loan at a time and have about 3 weeks to read them, then simply return or they expire.
This service is available for iPhone or iPad, and of course it is free.
I love it, have discovered lots of authors new to me and does save carting books home.

GreenBitterfly

Big assumptions in the OP about people not using libraries but buying from charity shops instead. I use both, I don't have a way of checking whether a book is in the library if I spot in the charity shop. The way my local library system is geared, is that it doesn't tell you when a book is/was due back, so a book could be showing as on loan but it's from two or three years ago, so there's little chance of the book being returned. So if I reserve it instead of buying it when I see it in a charity shop, there's a good chance I'll miss out.

The charity shop prices here are so low that they negate the waiting time for a reserved book to come in. Plus I live on a big hill, if it gets icy or snowy, I'm stuck at home and can't get to my local library, I like having some books that I own at home in reserve in case I'm stuck at home with nothing to read.