[red-indian]

For years my public library charged a $3 fee to get a book sent from another library in the system.

At some point I was chatting with a librarian about this and she revealed they had eliminated the fee so as not to discourage the use of interlibrary loans.

I few weeks later I tried checking out something from another library and was then treated to a 10 minute lecture on how it costs them $20 to process these loans and am I really sure I want it.

No thanks. I'll just get it for a penny plus $3.99 shipping from amazon, less than the cost of gasoline to drive into town to order it, pick it up, and return it (3 round trips).

[derefr]

> No thanks. I'll just get it for a penny plus $3.99 shipping from amazon, less than the cost of gasoline to drive into town to order it, pick it up, and return it (3 round trips).

Says Mr. Fancy-pants here with a mailbox/street-accessible doorstep that packages can fit in/on.

Us apartment-dwellers often end up with a notice that says that FedEx or whichever last-mile carrier couldn't in good conscience leave your box in the apartment lobby (and, implicitly, couldn't be arsed to come up the elevator and put the box in front of your apartment door) so instead they have driven your package back to the nearest FedEx warehouse half-way across town, where you're welcome to [pay for the gas required to] come get it. After, of course, waiting 30 minutes behind several people each taking 10 minutes to send packages, before you can spend 30 seconds receiving yours.

Oh, and although you could have intercepted the delivery-man like a linebacker to receive your package today, because you didn't, it won't be available at the warehouse until tomorrow afternoon. Or maybe four days from now. And that's if they don't put it back on a truck to attempt to deliver it again, and again, and again (and give you no way to specify in the delivery instructions that they should just stop trying.)

And after they do finally give up putting it on the truck, they'll make sure to only wait a few days before they send it back to whoever sent it to you, making the sender eat a huge shipping cost that'll make them unlikely to ever send you anything again.

For me, receiving an Amazon delivery both costs more, and takes more time, than buying the same thing in a brick-and-mortar retail store, let alone going to the library!

[sarah180]

This may be an obnoxious comment, but if you haven't considered Amazon Locker, you should see if there's one near you. I can say from experience that there are a lot of them around even modestly sized cities and they can make this a lot easier.

[AdamJacobMuller]

That's awful. I would move.

[reaperducer]

That's really a shame. My library will transfer any book, DVD, computer game, power tool, or even a wifi hotspot from another library for free and usually within two days.

As recently as this past fall I requested books from libraries in New Mexico and New York and both came with zero fees.

I sure hope your local library system has dropped their fees by now.

[maxlybbert]

I suspect that the $20 price tag is “per carload” (or vanload, etc.). In other words, it’s only expensive per-book because it isn’t used much. I currently live in South Carolina, and I can use the local library’s website to request an inter-library transfer from several other library systems in the state. I know they wouldn’t make it that easy if they were paying $20 per transfer. On the other hand, your library is probably paying $20/transfer because they do everything they can to make transfers rare.

[gruez]

>No thanks. I'll just get it for a penny plus $3.99 shipping from amazon

There are books for a penny on Amazon?

[colechristensen]

The shipping charge covers whatever meager profit they get.

Something like the profitability of collecting cans for the deposit.

[nitwit005]

Quite a lot of them. The publishers are quite upset at the price collapse of used books as people go grab those up.