iamthatis4536 t1_jdeagxp wrote on March 23, 2023 at 7:46 PM

Reply to comment by smileglysdi in Why Kids Aren’t Falling in Love With Reading by drak0bsidian

Last time I tried to inter-library loan something it was twice the cost of buying it used. Yeah I’m a pro at finding cheap books, but then you have to do something with them when you are done.

smileglysdi t1_jdeblta wrote on March 23, 2023 at 7:53 PM

Oh, no!! I have lived in 5 states and interlibrary loan never cost me anything!!! I totally understand the space issue. I donate to little free libraries. Or goodwill- in my town, if I donate to goodwill, they give you a 10 percent off coupon which I then use to buy more books! I actually keep very few books myself, but we have soooo many kids books. I am an elementary teacher though, so as soon as my kids outgrow them, they are being donated to school. They use them as giveaways, in book swaps, just in classroom libraries, all kinds of ways!

smileglysdi t1_jdebw4p wrote on March 23, 2023 at 7:55 PM

Now that I have outed myself as a teacher, I just want to add that MANY of us do NOT believe in only letting kids check out certain “level” books!!! That is an absolute travesty.

iamthatis4536 t1_jdeolwu wrote on March 23, 2023 at 9:16 PM

I think a lot of my problem is that we live in the middle of nowhere. There’s no goodwill haha.

To be honest, I don’t really think all the teachers support the check out restrictions but I think there are some families that have abused it in the past. The principal recently “snuck” a book to one of my kids that is 3 “grades” above them. I’m definitely not trying to trash the school, I definitely think they care and are doing the best they can in a hard situation.

Honestly, I’ve only lived in one town I didn’t have to pay for inter-library loans. It was in the next county over haha. I don’t think there are consistent rules around a lot of this stuff, even in the same state. One library system we were in was so bad they tried to charge us for books we had never checked out ever. Multiple times. I think it can be a really mixed bag sometimes.