I Love Interlibrary Loan!

Bookish Beck hosts the #LoveYourLibrary meme on the last Monday of each month. I'm a bit behind as it is now February, but these things happen.

I read quite a bit, and a lot of what I read is backlist. I am also apt to go down rabbit holes when I discover an author or get interested in a new topic. This means that even though I have an excellent public library with a sizable collection there are books I want to read that they don't have on their shelves. This is where interlibrary loan (ILL) comes in. Admittedly I am biased because running this state-wide program is a major part of my job, but as a reader I love it.

Different libraries handle this service differently, but requesting ILLs is super easy at my public library. I log into the state-wide system with my regular barcode and password and I place a request for what I want. When it comes in I get a notice through the regular catalog notification process that it is ready for me to pick up.

In the past couple of months I have gotten these titles via ILL, mostly for my Century of Books project:

• A Voice from the Attic: Essays on the Art of Reading by Robertson Davies 
• Love Among the Chickens by P. G. Wodehouse (published in 1906)
• Esau and Jacob: A Novel by Machado de Assis (published in 1904)
• Buttered Side Down: Stories by Edna Ferber (published in 1912)

If you want to read something that your library doesn't have, ask them if they offer this service. 

Love Your Library

Bookish Beck hosts the #LoveYourLibrary meme on the last Monday of each month. I discovered this celebration of libraries from a post at Scones and Chaises Longues. Since I am a HUGE fan of libraries I decided to join in beginning this month. For this first post I decided to indulge in a look back at my life in libraries. 

I have been a library patron since I was old enough to write my own name on my card (this was a requirement at the Omaha Public Library). We moved when I was ten and then I got to have two library cards: one for Brooklyn Public and one for New York Public. I worked in the school library when I was in middle school (we call it Intermediate School in NYC) and during my freshman year of high school. I attended New York University, where I also worked in the library, and one of the librarians there encouraged me to go to graduate school for Library and Information Science. I moved to Washington, DC and got my MSLIS from Catholic University. This was another city where I got to have two library cards: DC Public and the Library of Congress. After working in various special libraries I ended up moving to New Hampshire where I got a job (and a library card) at the NH State Library. My local library (which I visit pretty much weekly) is the Manchester City Library. 

I read quite a few books, and I look at a TON more than I read because I can do that for free from the library. I also get magazines, downloadable audiobooks, DVDs, and books on CD. It feels like such a treat to look through the new books  section (or the craft section, or the cookbook section, or ...)  and pull every book that appeals to me from the shelf so I can take it home and look at it at my leisure to decide if I want to read it (or sometimes to just look at all the pretty pictures in the decorating books).

I am definitely guilty of pestering my friends (the ones who are readers anyway) to use their public libraries. It is the best deal out there!