The Sound of Silence

The poor librarian took pity on me today. I was the victim of all of their policy changes from this summer. I already knew that the budget cuts had changed the library hours. This has made it difficult for me to get to the library because I try to go between 8-9pm when the kids are fed and on their way to bed. The new hours have the library closing at 8, which is a more inconvenient time for me.

So what else changed?

For starters, the limit on overdue charges went from $25 to $15. I have to say that I tend to have overdue charges because I normally have a stack of books and a few are missing. The $75 I spend at the library a year pales in comparison to what I would spend on the books.

The second change was that the fines went from $0.15 to $0.30. This may not seem like a big deal, but with a 50 book limit (Thank God that didn't change!), you reach your maximum in overdue charges on the 1st day overdue.

The third policy that changed was that I can no longer give my children's library card number and have their books put on their account. I must have their physical card. Since I did not want to carry 5 library cards around in addition to the 5 insurance cards that I have to carry around (why people ever complain about a mother having a big purse is beyond me. As if I could help it with all these extra ID's I need to carry around!!), I had put a label on the back of my library card with all the kids library #'s on them. So much for that idea! Anyway since we were checking out 56 books, I was 6 over the limit. Without the kid's cards, I thought I was out of luck, but the librarian (who was explaining all these policy changes) took pity on me and "forced through" the extra books onto my account. Thank heavens! I really appreciated it.

And what was my reward for (somehow finding) patience with the new policies? --a kind librarian and a car ride home with SILENT children who were all reading their books. Ahhhh, now that was an outing worth taking!!!