Heavy Library Users
True confessions of a heavy library user – The Boston Globe is an article that has generated a lot of discussion on the library mailing list, Publib. There is discussion about how heavy users who check out and reserve so many materials affect the services we can offer.
I am firmly of the opinion that heavy users are wonderful for our business. Not only do they raise our circulation statistics and in return often our budgets, but they are the type of people who will crow about our services to others. So often we worry that we are no longer in a society that reads and uses libraries, how can we then complain that some people use us too much? Yes libraries, put on logical limits to both reserves and check outs, but still let those enthusiastic patrons use our collections without judgment and with our support.
A final disclosure is that my family and I are heavy library users. We always have at least twenty items checked out, ok thirty… forty.
