I'm starting my Master's of Library and Information Science this semester, and part of the material we talked about last week was "scanning the periphery". This is basically when an organization keeps an eye on things that aren't strictly associated with them, so that they can try to recognize trends/events that may wind up effecting their organization. A lot of people discussed technology, such as libraries expanding collections to include ebooks and readers and offering free technology classes. I'm curious - what's your favorite thing about the library you use? Is there anything that drives you crazy?

I guess my favorite thing would have to be that they do try to listen and get get in a wide variety of books/the popular ones everyone wants. They also stay up to date pretty well for a small town library, we are lucky.

However I wish they would pay more attention to the teenager section. It can get loud. Like the teens playing video games the other day.

It's too tiny. My home library has more books. On the plus side, it's a real friendly place. Kings Beach library

My library has county-wide loaning, so there's a wide selection. Unfortunately, it doesn't stock all the comic books I want to read. I usually look on the internet for franchise tie-ins, manga that hasn't been licensed in the US, foreign films, books on Social Issues etc.

That and the computers have headphones that are all broken in some way.

Your library looks really cute! :P the hours there are really interesting, but with a smaller library like that there's only so much you can do

I don't keep up with comics very well, but there are so many I imagine it would be tough to keep less popular ones in stock, let alone popular ones like the New 52 right now. So do all the computers there have headphones that you can use? That's pretty cool if you don't own any.

Luckily they have a county-wide lending set-up, so if you're patient you can get what you want to read or watch. I even gave them a list of art books in my personal collection, that I'll let people borrow. (My how to draw Manga series is pretty popular). The small town vibe is nice, and since I work graveyard the weird hours aren't too inconvenient. It's not many towns that an honor system book sale would work, but here they just have an old ballot box to drop whatever you want to pay for a book sitting next to a picnic table covered in books out behind the library (weather permitting) all Summer. Nearly everyone is cool about paying for what they take.

Woah, it's cool that you can borrow and loan from personal collections! I've never heard of a setup like that before. That definitely widens the possible materials someone can check out. How does it work? Does the library contact you when someone wants to borrow one of your books and you bring it in and they give it to the person borrowing it?

Yeah, the librarian calls me (or texts nowadays) when she gets a request from my list and I bring it in. The library has such limited space that I offered to loan them books that they didn't have room for. Mostly big art books, but I have a pretty extensive collection of classic Fantasy and Science Fiction from the 1970's and 80's. It's not a regular program, we just do it on our own cause I like to share my love of books. I'm sure the county would find a reason to disapprove if we told them about it.

I work at a library, so a lot of my thoughts are going to be based on that perspective :)

Some things I like:

• For not being in a "well-off" area, we have pretty good funding because our state is friendly to libraries. We're part of an awesome state-wide lending consortium that makes it super, super easy to get books from tons of different libraries
• Pretty realistic rules as far as food and drink and using a cell phone - basically, as long as you aren't making a problem, you're okay in most areas.
• Several options for ebook/audiobook downloading that each have their strong points

Some things I don't like:

• The building is 70s-tastic and doesn't have either old-fashioned charm or modern newness. There's also no good options for future expansion.
• There aren't enough full-time positions of any kind
• My department doesn't have windows :( haha

I really like your food and drink policies - I feel like people are aware of taking care of the materials they're using while they're eating/drinking so that they don't make a mess. In the library where I work, there's no food, only covered beverages. Though our district opened a new branch this summer and they have a cafe in there, so I think they have a more lax food policy. I've been really loving the audiobook availability lately - I've started listening to audiobooks when I drive, so it's awesome how many books are available to download to smartphones.

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