Changes in library circulation policy

[magentamn]

I finally wrote to the Library Board. I decided to send emails to each member, because there is another Board meeting this Wednesday, and I hope to perhaps have a tiny bit of influence.

Comments

[polyranger]

Your taxes went down? Wow! The St. Paul house went up 13.7%! That sucked! Inver Grove went up 6.5%.

I hope you get your desired results and not just a bunch of form letters in return.

[magentamn]

My assessment went down $30k, and my taxes were $30 less than last year, instead of hundreds more. I understand this is not uncommon, as assessments went up a great deal during the housing boom.

[ckd]

I hope this helps.

I'm mightily spoiled; my home library system (Cambridge) has a beautiful part-new/part-renovated main building and is also part of the incredibly good Minuteman Library Network; book requests automatically go network-wide, so if Dover has 3 available copies of That Book I Want, it will arrive in a few days even if Cambridge doesn't have it (or has it but is all out of copies). In addition, the Boston Public Library is the "library of last resort" for all of Massachusetts, so I can use that whenever I want/need to.

I really don't begrudge them my property tax money.

[naomikritzer]

I have almost entirely given up on the Minneapolis libraries and do all my library stuff in St. Paul. The Hillcrest Library has a good selection, better hours, easier parking, and a much less miserable staff than Lake Street. And it isn't any further from my house.

(I try to give the Lake Street staff the benefit of the doubt in terms of the misery of their setup, but they're also pretty routinely awful to the people who come in. I think the worst ever was when they were difficult and grudging about giving a card to a family that was living in town temporarily at the Ronald McDonald House. Their child, who was very very obviously seriously ill, was with them.)

[naomikritzer]

And just to be clear, they were going to be living in Hennepin County for months and they had a fixed address and I believe they even had mail that they'd received at the Ronald McDonald house though it wasn't a utility bill. Giving them a library card should not have been a hassle. They were obviously not lying about being in town for medical treatment: their kid had no hair and was wearing a germ-filter mask.

[jenett]

Oh, ugh on the above

[faunhaert]

wonder if it would be good to do a self check in?
have a scanner by the front , like the self scanner at walmart or target
you scan in your card then hit return and scan your books in?

not getting things scanned in in time has cost me fines.