We always knew times were bad when we had to place holds on the Resume Books. And sometimes even buy more. We figured if THAT many people were suddenly looking for jobs things must be bad. And sure enough a month or two later? We'd find out there'd been a spike in unemployment.

read or wanted to read and began using the library on a regular basis. This was a real breakthrough. I still buy books, but, unless I'm going to mark them up for future reference, I give them to the library, if they need them. I'm so glad I got back to using the libary! I was running out of bookshelf space, had trouble culling my collection, and found using the library freeing, in several senses.

(Alas, my request for the first season of The Wire is going to take about 10 months, given my position on the waiting list.)

Then, I had frozen pipes* while I was away during the winter and lost most of my book collection. I do miss some books which are out of print and art books--and my poetry books, bcz poetry is something I dip back into over and over.

The real down side for the libraries and their users is that when times are bad, tax revenues go down, and the library budgets get squeezed. In my county, the major library just had its bandwidth cut, and now internet speeds have declined substantially, for both internal work and for librarians and patrons using the library computers. Very frustrating--eats up librarians' time, but, hey, they're just workers.
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*My oil tank is in the under-the-house garage and kids broke in to use my basement to hang out, apparently, then left the door alightly ajar. Cold air was directly hitting the tank, and the oil jelled in the small pipe going to the furnace, resulting in the furnace not working.

My neighbor watching my house eventually found the problem, we called in the oil company to restart the furnace, but the service person didn't check all the hot water baseboard heating pipes in the basement--resulting in pipes bursting in three places--and the house flooding and then mold growing.

I tried to save my books, but the insurance company refused to pay for climate controlled storage and instead brought in one of those metal storage pods. I didn't realize that was a really bad thing, moisture-wise--so lost my books to mold, but without any reimbursement by the insurance company. They had to know what was going to happen. Those safe hands? They grab you around the neck....

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR WINTER: Learned too late, but for anyone with hot water baseboard heating, the water in those pipes can have antifreeze added which will protect them from freezing in most situations. I believe it's a special antifreeze. Only learned that from some people staying at the same motel I and the cats were staying in while the house was being "remediated." Not from my oil company, my oil co-op, my furnace mechanic, my plumber, or the insurance company. I strongly recommended to the insurance company and to the oil company that they send out inserts to their customers providing this important information (in appropriate climates and regions. Never happened.)

Thank you so much, Ohio and Cindy. I was told the heating water is completely separate from the household use water, even though my boiler heats my water...need to double check.

And the corrosion? Need to check and double check on that as well.

Back to libraries and increasing usage: I wonder how many additional patrons from the community most libraries can handle without needing to increase budgets significantly and also to add infrastructure.

Two of my community libraries did increase space recently, my local by remodeling and adding a level and the central library by moving to a larger location. Interestingly, my local library actually had to cull much of its collection since the remodeling design resulted in less shelf space! The local librarians were stunned and saddened to have to toss many volumes Some went into the libary system's fundraising rummage sale, but many were just dumped. Only softcover books can be sent to the jails, btw, bcz hardcover books can be used to hide things. Sending books to foreign libraries in poor nations? Too expensive.

One area which has seen significant increases in size in the local libraries is foreign language collections, particularly languages of India and Pakistan, Chinese, and Spanish. But others as well as this area has many new immigrants. Mpre foreign films in the video/DVD collection as well.

ask anybody who's ever done indoor-air-quality work.

...last August after only going sporadically for years, and now I use it regularly. Yes, they are also pretty decent indicators of the health of the economy, at least in most places. I've noticed how the computer lab exploded in usages even in just the last few months. I used to be able to get in there (when I was without home internet) with little to no wait. Now, you'll be lucky if your wait is less than a half-an-hour after 5 PM. And, while many kids use them to check their myspace and use youtube, at least half of the people I see there are filling out online job applications and such.