Episode: 667
Title: HPR0667: Your Local Library
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0667/hpr0667.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 00:37:46

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Hi this is John and SC doing my second hacker public radio episode. Today I
wanted to talk about the local library. It's a resource that I think is really
underused by a lot of people. I should say right off the bat but I am in America
and I realize that this might be different in other countries and even other
states. I live in a small town and have a fairly small library but it does a
lot and I have people talk to me all the time and they say you know I really
should get a library card and I say well do it but they wind up not doing it and
sort of wishing they did and I thought that might be a good subject for an
episode. Library cards are still free at least where I am. In addition to the
latest books and I've always been a big reader and still check out lots and lots
and lots of books. I go to the library probably twice a week for one reason or
another but they also have DVDs, audiobooks, magazines,
reference material of course and my library actually has a magazine exchange program
where you bring in magazines if you want to get rid of them and pick up magazines if you
want to read the ones people brought in you don't check them out you don't keep them forever
doing anything you want with them. It's just a way of exchanging old magazines that
is really helpful. I've used it a lot in fact I read a lot of Linux magazines like Linux
Journal and I had 30 some issues of various Linux magazines that I dumped off at the library
one day and came back two days later and they were all gone so somebody got some use at them.
Wireless access is available at the library 24 hours a day seven days a week.
Just recently you've been able to download ebooks if you have a library account you can log in
from home and download ebooks there's 15,000 of them available at my library.
There are approximately 25 computers in the library and these are for people that don't
have a computer or their computer is down or something like that. I have logged on to them and
discovered that they have specialized databases that you can only access if you're sitting
in the library on one of the computers it's not allowed to remote in and do the same thing.
I was able to research the local newspapers and go back 15 or 20 years way back in their databases
no charge ancestry.com is available to access their databases from the library itself only like I
said if you're in the genealogy they have legal sites and a great deal of stuff that can be done
right there using one of the computers in the library and even though you can't access those
specialized databases from home there is a lot you can do from home you can log in and check out
books, reserve books, check out books in other libraries in the area and they will be delivered to
your library and somebody will email you and tell you when they're there. You can check the
catalog to see what books are available when they might be back as a wide variety of things you can do
from home. I do check out books at my local library very frequently but I have also been checking out
the DVDs the overwhelming majority of them are no charge you just check them out just like a book
and you can check out I believe six at a time and keep them for two or three weeks I'm not sure
I actually watched the entire Star Trek Voyager series from the library checking out their DVDs all
which was free now the latest DVDs movies that are semi-currents say two or three months old or
something they do have a rental program but it's very cheap it's one dollar for four days rental
and then 25 cents for each day you keep it after that it probably varies from library to library but
I've got a lot of use out of that too from where I live getting to my the main portion of my city
I have to pass the library so I stop there frequently and as I said even as a little boy I used to
spend lots of times in whatever library I
lived near and I've always found them extremely useful and I thought that I would
bring this to everybody's attention just in case it's something that's slipped out of your radar
and you might be interested in having another look
thank you for listening to Half the Public Radio
hpr sponsored by caro.net so head on over to c-a-r-o.nc for all of those movies
so