Crime, Mysteries & Thrillers discussion

What's going on with the library you frequent? Is it open? For curbside only? Have you been?

Currently closed due to a Covid incident. Due to reopen Feb 1

Open normal hours with adherence to Covid-19 restrictions. They do a lot of community-support events and many programs for children.

My local libraries closed in March and were unavailable unless you downloaded the apps. To decrease the pain, they had shifted more resources online. In October, they started a limited rollout of curbside pickup service which means less than 25% of the branches are involved and hours have been shortened. Many pandemic restrictions remain in place such as returned books sit in a bin for a week before the staff is allowed to handle them and scan them as returned.

My county is very strict and has been throughout the pandemic. All of the libraries in my county and surrounding counties are doing curbside pickup by appointment only. Items are quarantined for 48 hours. There are no fines incurred until libraries open back up again. They are allowing free outdoor public wifi with certain libraries.

My library is open with restrictions too and returned books go into quarantine for a week before they're checked back in. We're still having our in person book club via zoom.

Found out that my in person book club can use an in library room now if we want too. Not sure I'm ready for this.

We can’t go into ours but we can wait outside with the librarian fetching your holds. No overdue fines, and no apparent limit as to how many books you can have out at one time. A neighbour has around 70 checked out 🙉

We can check out a lot of books at our library too but I don't like that. Our check out time is 21 days and I'm sure some people will read 70 books in 21 days but most won't and that means they aren't there for those of us who want to read a specific book. The last few years our library hasn't been able to buy multiples of one title so if a person keeps a book for 3 months waiting on their pile of 69 other books then no one else can read it.

We had limits but for some reason they’re not following their own rules. Good thing they buy lots of copies of popular books, over a hundred in the case of some best selling authors.

My local library has no problem stocking multiple copies of many romances but can't manage to have one complete set of books by any multi-book series by any mystery writer like Robert B. Parker, John Sandford, or Craig Johnson.

Our budget must have been cut almost completely off a few years ago because the library gets one copy of a title now. My in person book club has been struggling to get books to read. Some of us have audible or other accounts we can use or we wouldn't be able to meet. Yesterday I saw a lady at the library that used to come to our book club but hasn't been in a long time, but for some reason she's still following our schedule which the library posts. And she's one of the people who keeps books past their due date. We're thinking of not being library associated anymore so this particular person will stop checking out books that the rest of us need to read since there aren't many copies. Yesterday this lady had checked out the next 2 months books. I was very tempted to ask her to put them back.

We’re so lucky up here. Our city library has over 1000 specific book club sets (each set usually has 15-20 copies) that book clubs can request. The beauty is that these books do not circulate among the general library users so as long as a set isn’t being used everyone will have a copy of the book without needing to go on any wait lists.

Sheri wrote: "Our budget must have been cut almost completely off a few years ago because the library gets one copy of a title now. My in person book club has been struggling to get books to read. Some of us have audible or other accounts we can use or we wouldn't be able to meet. Yesterday I saw a lady at the library that used to come to our book club but hasn't been in a long time, but for some reason she's still following our schedule which the library posts. And she's one of the people who keeps books past their due date. We're thinking of not being library associated anymore so this particular person will stop checking out books that the rest of us need to read since there aren't many copies. Yesterday this lady had checked out the next 2 months books. I was very tempted to ask her to put them back."

That is so funny, but not really. (You know what I mean, Sheri. LOL) I think that is so rude and selfish to check out so many books and to hold on to them. I know many libraries are not incurring fines or check out limited, but if someone holds on to a book 60, 90 days or more or checks out 50 books, there has to be some reasonableness involved. There are many people who want those same books and there should be some type of penalty or limit. I know the library cannot prevent someone from joining their book clubs, but her actions seem so selfish.

I'm lucky that I am a member of 6 library systems in my area. If one doesn't have the book, usually another will. I always return on time and if it's digital and I've finished it, I return it before it's due . I just think about how I am high on the holds list and if people would return their digital content as soon as they've finished the book, then the sooner the rest of us can move up on the holds list!

Julesy wrote: "Sheri wrote: "Our budget must have been cut almost completely off a few years ago because the library gets one copy of a title now. My in person book club has been struggling to get books to read. ..."

Do you have to pay to join more than one library system? The last time I checked it was $25.00 for me to join another system that is pretty close to me.