5 reasons my library ‘gets’ me.

I was recently reminded why I hap­pily sup­port my local lib­rary, and yes, this is all about me.

The back­story: A friend recom­men­ded a few movies over din­ner the other even­ing. The local video store didn’t have them, so after remem­ber­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with another friend, I went to the local lib­rary, from the com­fort of my desktop.

After a brief cata­logue search, all my movies were placed on hold to be delivered to the branch near work when they’re ready to be picked up.

Ãœber con­veni­ent, and since this is all about me here’s 5 solid reas­ons my lib­rary is convenient:

1. Hard to find books, CDs and DVDs — In my exper­i­ence, lib­rar­ies will tend to have more var­ied selec­tion, not being driven by the need to sell more units of the pop­u­lar stuff, they can have one or two cop­ies of more eclectic works.
2. Live stream­ing and down­load­able music — this one sur­prised me. The Edmon­ton Pub­lic Lib­rary has the Naxos music cata­logue avail­able for stream­ing, as well as time-limited down­loads of of eAu­diobooks Over­drive (Win­dows Media only (boo!) a ser­vice I’ve not used, yet).
3. Online cata­logue with reser­va­tion sys­tem — I can reserve books when it’s con­veni­ent for me, say, at 2am.
4. Mod­est price, huge bene­fits — Lib­rary fees are inex­pens­ive. Their value to me, and to my com­munity are huge. My lib­rary has pro­gram­ming for kids, annual book sales, is a great meet­ing place, and is an awe­some resource.
5. The Edmon­ton Pub­lic Lib­rary gets social media — Heck, how many stodgy old places do you know that develop their own Face­book Applic­a­tion?

Photo cour­tesy Nrbelex