Thursday, September 12, 2019

Libraries

One of the first things we did upon arriving in Princeton was to get library cards at the Princeton Public Library located very near Palmer Square and just off the busy Nassau Street bordering the university.   Parking is free in the Spring Street parking deck where you usually have to drive up to the top floors to find a space. I do not like parking decks!

To my surprise, I learned that 508 Barclay Square may have a Princeton postal address but it actually is located in Plainsboro, New Jersey.  I had to pay $75 to get a library card--a bargain at the senior rate.  I was happy enough to do so and the gentleman who helped me was very enthusiastic telling me all the benefits I would get for membership.

That may have been the first and last time I checked out books at the Princeton Public Library.  If we  live in Plainsboro, we decided we should find the Plainsboro Library.  It is a four mile drive from our apartment about the same distance as the Princeton Library.   Parking is easy in a large adjacent lot.   A library card is free and if the library does not have the book I want, I can use an interlibrary loan service that will find the book at one of about 30 libraries in Middlesex County.

  It is not high tech.  The librarian at the counter checks out books for you.  There are no electronic chips in the books to facilitate the process as we had in the St. Joseph Library in Indiana.  In fact, I was told they just stopped stamping the due dates in the back of books and are now using printed receipts.

Last week I began volunteering to assist the interlibrary process.  This involves unpacking books from those 30 libraries and sorting them into two categories--those being returned to Plainsboro and those requested from elsewhere for local patrons.  Then my job is to sort all the returned books into 30 piles--one for each library in the system--and pack them into bags or boxes.   It is not a difficult job but after an hour my back was hurting from bending over the array of books.  There were literally hundreds of books to be processed.

Just as in South Bend, I need to thank our libraries by volunteering.  At least here, no one made me take a drug test and no one is insisting I wear closed toe shoes.  Tomorrow I will go in and try to make it for two hours of work but I will also leave with a book on hold for me and another one I hope to find in the stacks.  How grateful I am for our libraries!


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