Celebrating the Smartest Card!

What’s white and blue and black and gives you access to literature classics and bestsellers, local artists, computer classes, pop music, Hollywood blockbusters and indie films, TED Talks, continuing education courses, and all the LOL Cats you can handle?  Yes, indeed, it’s your Leander Public Library card!  September is the month we celebrate all that your library card can do for you.  So let’s just see why it’s called the smartest card in your wallet and take a look at the numbers.  

If you live within the City limits, you pay taxes to the City which makes you eligible for a free library card.  If you live outside the City limits and bring us a TexShare card from another library you can also get a free card.  Otherwise, it will cost you $15 annually, or $1.25 a month.  You can’t really argue with the price.

Say you’re an occasional user.  Maybe you need to buy a new washing machine so you come to the library to look at Consumer Reports ($26 subscription) to do some cost and quality comparisons, and since you’re here anyway, you may as well see if you can get ideas for organizing your important papers better than the shoebox method (Get It Together, $24.99), and the kids want a dog, so you decide to check out what that entails (Your Puppy, Your Dog, $25).  If you return the books on time and don’t rack up any 10-cents-a-day fines, you’ve gotten about a $75 value with your library card. That seems pretty smart.

For regular library users, the value grows significantly.  If you read a bestseller every two weeks, which is the check-out period, you’ll have read $400 - $500 worth of books in a year.  Add in a DVD a week and, even at Redbox prices, that’s another $50.  If your kids are avid readers as well, they may be checking the maximum of 35 items for a whopping average of $400 in one fell swoop.  That’s really smart!

Now if you’re a heavy library user, besides checking out a book and a DVD or two every week, you might be coming in 4 or 5 days a week to work on your laptop using the library’s wi-fi ($30 - $70/mo).  And maybe you’re brushing up on your excel skills or learning how to fundraise for your favorite charity through Universal Class, or you’re learning French for that anniversary trip to Paris through Mango Languages, two of our online resources. (Classes can run from $50 - $500+.)  Add in an audiobook ($50 avg.) to listen to in the car while you wait in line to pick your kids up from school, and an ebook ($40 avg.) to read on your phone when nobody is calling or texting, and the value you get with your library card could be well over $3000.  You must be a genius!

Proof positive that your library card really is the smartest card in your wallet!  And it makes you look smart every time you use it.  (Please remember to bring your books back on time!)