Saturday, January 26, 2008

The Library Series Part I

Welcome to the first installment of my library series!

I'm going to have to find out how much I spend on library taxes. I have no idea where to look, so that may take some time.

I also paid $25 to The Friends of the Library fund. Joining Friends of the library gives me free holds, a three day grace period on overdue books, and a lovely newsletter. (In Wichita, they charge .25 cents per hold. In other places I've lived, holds have been free. It depends on your library system.) If I get any late fees at any time during this project, I will add those in.

I read a huge variety of books, as you will see!

Books Currently on My Library Shelf (Note: this is not a week's worth of reading! Many of these check out for three weeks and can be renewed!):

Intern$16.50

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao$16.47
The Girl With the Golden Shoes$11.16
The Great Man: A Novel$16.29
No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories$15.64
How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead: Your Words in Print and Your Name in Lights$11.16
Women Don't Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation--and Positive Strategies for Change$11.20
Quarantine: A Novel$11.20
Undoing I Do: A Novel18.21
Bamboozled: How Americans are being Exploited by the Lies of the Liberal Agenda$11.47
Death in the Pot: The Impact of Food Poisoning on History$16.32
Circling My Mother: A Memoir$16.32
I Am America (And So Can You!)$16.19
Everything He Hasn't Told You Yet: A New Way to Get Men Talking About Stuff That Matters$11.66
The Fiber35 Diet: Nature's Weight Loss Secret$17.16
No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog$13.59
Quick-Fix Vegetarian: Healthy Home-Cooked Meals in 30 Minutes or Less$11.55
American Food Writing: An Anthology: With Classic Recipes$26.40



Cost to me so far: $25 Friends of the Library Membership.(I'll add taxes as soon as I get that figured out.)

Total Cost of the Books If I had Bought Them: $254 even!

6 comments:

Fishie said...

Since I rediscovered the library I definitely see the difference in my budget. I always shopped the half-price book stores, but I also collected a large stash of books I wouldn't read again. I read almost as fast as you, and that adds up! Since I found the online search and hold function, I can order to my heart's content for nothing!

Amy K. said...

You inspired me to get nosey about my town budget, and sort out exactly how much I'm paying per year for the library. It is remarkably little for what I get out of it!

My total came to $75.65/year for our household. Through the library I'm learning Spanish online, I have magazines for flights, exercise videos to shake things up, and I think I check out about 40 books/year. Plus they'll inter-library loan and hold for free, so I have a huge reservoir of books to choose from!

Thanks for the inspiration.

Aarwenn said...

I love my library; I second the poster who wrote about the search and hold function. It's like shopping on Amazon, but FREE!

I don't know if you check CDs out of your local library, but I check hundreds out of mine and make copies for myself. (I'm pretty sure this is legal, as long as I'm not distributing them to friends or selling my copies.) Adding this on to my library budget would drive my savings up sky-high!

Melsa said...

Hello,
in the UK we pay for the library through the council tax, where we live it is about £25 per year (about $50).

I love the library, not only can I get books to read, cookbooks to try out new recipes, my daughter gets stories read to with other children twice a week, every 4 weeks we have a toy library where you can go and play and take some toys home for 4 weeks, they have a reading club for grown ups and I could go on forever. All that paid for by Council Tax if I use it or not...

I love it!

Rhonna said...

Just a side note. It is illegal to borrow CD's from the library and copy them. FYI

Aarwenn said...

Hi rhonna,

You really made me nervous about this, so I looked it up! I have no legal training, but I do believe that the fair use exception to copyright law, which allows consumers to make copies of copyrighted music for non-commercial purposes, applies here. In addition, non-profit libraries, educational institutions, and a few other groups are exempt from criminal prosecution under copyright law.