littlestar

i am a patron of three different libraries now. i just signed up for the santa clara county library today.

Mountain View Public Library
San Jose Public Library
Santa Clara County Library

each library has their perks and they tend to have overlapping and non-overlapping selections. Link+ is a great system to use, as it opens up books from outside libraries as well, if your particular library doesn't have the book you're looking for. another nice feature is that dvd, cd, and audiobook borrowing is free... which is a nice change from my old home library in pv which charged $1.00/rental.

between the 3 of them, i hope to be able to track down most books i'm interested in.

these are some notes for why i go to the particular libraries. i will update them as i go along.

Mountain View:
- shorter waits on holds since they serve a smaller community
- very fast about purchasing requested material, as such, pretty up to date collection
- huge selection of audiobooks which are best searched for online (place holds) since they are frequently checked out
- decent collection of manga, anime, movies
- 15 item limit on holds (including DVDs)
- fairly fast turnover on holds as you can't renew something that's placed on hold
- comfortable places to sit and read
- it's a only mile away from my place

San Jose:
- many, many branches --> some of them newer than others
- huge collection
- you can borrow from one branch and return to another branch without any problems -- flexible
- 10 item limit on holds (doesn't let you put holds on DVDs though)
- can renew books, DVDs, CDs easily, because they don't restrict you based on whether someone's requested the book or not --> slower turnover on books with lots of holds
- good youth (teens, juniors, kids) collections

i will update on Santa Clara as i go along.

as for my tax dollars at work... one of the books i borrowed today was purchased with Measure A money. it's nice to see that it's already getting spent and being put to good use. :)