Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
The Glasgow City-County Library is constantly looking for ways to improve and expand our service. Recently, we have been evaluating expanding our interlibrary loan services to include items previously offered on a limited basis. Interlibrary loan allows us to access items in libraries across the continental United States to lend to our patrons.
As always, we have to balance services with our funding and make hard decisions on how to use your monies to the best benefit of the entire community. Next week, we will be expanding the ability for patrons to request interlibrary loans of DVDs (movies and TV shows) as well as to items the library owns but are currently checked out. The caveat to this service expansion is that the borrowing patron will need to reimburse the library for the return shipping of the item at a flat rate of $3 at the time the item is picked up.
The library currently spends $300 a month on average to ship books back to other libraries. Our budget cannot support a significant increase. However, as there are no video stores in Glasgow, the ability to expand our entertainment services though borrowing from other libraries is thought to be a service that could be utilized by our community.
We felt that the $3 shipping fee would be commensurate with the cost of a video store rental. Additionally, we felt that due to the many book clubs in Valley County, that sometimes many patrons might want to read the same book at the same time.
We are able and will continue to be able to place a patron on waiting list for a book and call them when it returns. However, this timeline does not always meet the patrons’ need.
Moving forward, the patron has another option, which is to get the book sooner and reimburse the library for the shipping charges. This option would be less expensive than procuring the book independently. We will be evaluating these new options at the end of six months to determine if the offerings should remain a permanent service of the library.
Along with these new options, next week we will be hosting Tuesday Tech Night with Brian Gregory on Sept. 23. The technology lesson and discussion will be held at the library in the reading area. I think that we have been pretty easy on Brian lately, so please bring your toughest questions and challenges. I am sure that we can make Brian think hard.
Thank you, and have a well-read day.
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