I know this may be common sense to some, but for me it was a paradigm shift in my way of living. I grew up with the mentality that if you wanted a book or wanted anything like a movie or CD you just went to the local store and bought it (barnes and noble wasn’t around yet). My wife is of the opposite mentality, raised to go to the library for everything. A couple years ago she finished her Masters in Library Science Degree and has worked in libraries ever since. Slowly she has managed to de-brainwash me from the consumer mentality. Now whenever I want something to read, I get it from a library, it’s free.
But what about all the newest and latest books you say… Well, they have those too.
What are you telling me that I don’t already know you say… here is something most people don’t know. Say you want a Dave Ramsey- Total Money Makeover book from the library only it’s too new and your local library doesn’t have it. Don’t fret, don’t go home and certainly don’t go to the book store and pay for it. All libraries have access to Inter-Library-Loan, 99% of them are free, I think like NYC charges $1 or something, but it’s been free anywhere I lived. How it works: You want a book/DVD/CD/whatever, so you go up to the librarian at your library and say you are wanting Dave Ramsey-Total Money Makeover for example but that they don’t have it there and you want to get it inter library loan. She will probably take some info like name and phone number and get it on it’s way. Usually in 3-4 days they will call and let you know it’s in, sometimes if it is hard to find and checked out it might take a couple weeks. BUT IT’s FREE, so how can you complain. We do it all the time, diet books, finance books, new DVD releases, documentaries, new music cd’s. It makes our entertainment costs ZERO. NADA. ZIP.
Such a great service and libraries are happy to do it since the statistics help make them look better too.
See, you can learn something new and frugal.
I get this idea. I do work at a library though. I’ve been told that it costs the system $20 every time they do an interlibrary loan. Which I suppose eventually is trickling down to the taxpayer. For the most part however–NEW materials are available in decent sized library systems without doing an interlibrary loan. In Charlotte NC we have about 24 branches–chances are one of them or more has the book/cd/dvd– if its new– you may need to get on a waiting list for it–but you can get it free. Interlibrary loans are usually for things that aren’t so much ‘new’ as a tad ‘obscure’ and are generally gotten from some college library or other. It is free to the libary patrons–but I would suggest not going overboard with it–as it truly isn’t free in the long run. Mary t
In some states it may be like that. My wife is an MLS librarian for the regional system here in Kansas so I only know what she has told me. Here in Kansas there is X dollars appropriated for the program and if it isn’t used, the money is gone and next year the program gets less. It’s kind of a sucky way to do things. I say new material too as here in Kansas, most libraries in these small towns have very little new material and most of the inter library loan program here is just getting in the new materials. I think that regionally there are differences in the program and it is interesting to hear about the differences in NC. Thanks for leaving the comment Mary!
Oh, true–probably because Charlotte is a big city too, has a bigger budget. Enjoyed visiting your blog!