Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

One of the problems

with being a librarian is, well, you tend to want to keep the books. We love books. And sometimes, yes, even librarians, keep the books a bit too long. So I racked up some fines at the public library, enough that I couldn't check out books, CDs, Kindle books, audiobooks, or download songs.  I'm a pretty decent library user--I do all those things.  Fortunately, they are doing something through December 31st that was really helpful to me: they're allowing people to 'read off their fines'.  Basically, for every hour you read, you can get up to $8 forgiven.  You must do it in the library.  Tonight was the only night I could do it, as Christmas weekend was a busy time of book moving and I have appointments two days this week in the evening.  I had an appointment today, actually, but I was out around 5 pm, so I went over to the library and registered, taking a book I have out from them, 'Pioneer Girl: An Annotated Autobiography' by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  And I read. And read. I started at 5:30 and went until 8 pm, and got everything forgiven. (I even read a little longer than I had to).  My legs fell asleep because I was reading at a table, sitting in a wooden chair, but no matter.  What does matter is that I have a clean slate, which is good, as I have no money at the moment to speak of, much less to spare for fines.  Thank you, Lexington Public Library!

No comments: