Quote:
Originally Posted by genuinegirly
University libraries are awesome. I'm a huge fan of interlibrary loan.
Now, community libraries are great, too. Just serve a totally different function in my mind. Catering to fun fiction, comic books, history, religion... Gotten plenty of good cookbooks and gardening references there. But even in high school I found them woefully inadequate for research. It would help if more communities would link up with university libraries for this reason. I tend to find friendlier and yet knowledgeable staff at community libraries. Though at the moment I am more likely to use the university library since they let grad students check out books for a semester at a time. I also prefer the extended hours offered by the university. I find it challenging to visit any establishment where the hours are limited to 1-4pm most days.
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Wow, those are some limited hours! And here I was bummed when we cut back hours to close at 6pm on Fridays and Saturdays and closed the library on Sundays. Our daytime hours are 10-8pm during the week, but I think those hours reflect how much our library gets used. I was there a couple weeks ago when the library opened, and there were lines outside the front door and the back door of people waiting to get in.
Our public library actually has some of the same electronic resources the university library does in terms of access to research databases. It's not as comprehensive, certainly, but if someone didn't necessarily have access to the university library, it would be a place to start. I like that.
I feel lucky that I live in a community with two totally awesome yet different libraries.
Also, how many people just love the smell of the stacks at a big library? Mmm, books.