A pleasant thought

[redbird]

I borrowed a library book this morning on my way to work.

At the railroad station, without a library card. Nor did they ask me to sign anything or show any sort of ID: they just asked what kinds of books I like, handed me a random mystery, and stamped a due date in it.

With record-keeping that loose, I'm considering whether I can return books I didn't borrow, and thus clear out a bit of shelf space.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Don't most libraries take donations?

B

[fuzzygabby.livejournal.com]

Mine does. If you drop your personal books in our book drops and don't come back to claim them in a reasonable amount of time, we assume they're donations and treat them as such. Though I don't know about a library that works out of a train station...

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Though if you want people to read them you're usually better off in giving away the books to your friends. I got back some of my books at a library sale after I had specifically asked if the library could use them.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

One of the ways in which most libraries "could use" donated books is to sell them, for those times when they need a bit more money to cover insurance payments or the electric bill more than they need another shelf of paperbacks. People do read books they get from library booksales, and often redistribute them, so I don't see what the problem is.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

These were some very rare books. I wanted to share them with other readers and I specifically asked if they were going to lend them or sell them. They said lend, they lied to me and I don't donate books to the library any more. Libraries are about the worse place on earth for hard to find books. Now I give or lend them to friends so I can be sure if I lose a book at least it is going to be read rather than ending up in the dumpster at the end of the library sale.

[negativeq.livejournal.com]

A library? In a railroad station???

[bibliotrope.livejournal.com]

Was it a paperback?

Some libraries do that with paperbacks. Your railroad-station branch -- which probably has a very small and very popular-fiction oriented collection, for commuters who have lots of time to read on the train but not much to spend at the library (thus no time to fuss with stuff like library cards) -- may well be operating on that principle.

Raynes Park

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

One of the London libraries is currently doing a redevelopment so the current stock is distributed to various locations, including the paperbacks to the local train station.

The policy is "take a book, or more than one book, return it or keep it, it's up to you"

I used to have an English teacher in New York that had the same policy and covered the entire back wall of the classroom, floor to ceiling, with bookshelves of paperbacks he'd buy at garage sales each weekend. I have a nice collection of Mad paperbacks, James Bond books etc. that I got that way.

[aliza250.livejournal.com]

My local library skims what they want out of donated books and sells the rest.