Cleveland Library has a new copy of Catching Fire on its new books shelf at this moment and is waiting for the Hunger Games to return. Zero waiting list. We mention this because there are 372 and 916 people waiting to read a copy in Wake County.
Oh, Cleveland Library serves both Wake and Johnston counties. Of course, like any normal public library, we issue press releases for an area wider than a mile to the county line, with 90% of our patrons living within 15 minutes drive. According to the census population numbers, provided by Johnston County, the population in the 10-mile circle around 40/42 is greater than the population of Cary. The residents of Cary, would not tolerate raising their families without a local library with a sufficient number of books to serve the population. Wake transports books between all its libraries 5 days a week to reduce waiting time for titles. 1. The Cleveland Library is located at 40/42 in Johnston County, 1 mile from the county line. 2. The same waiting lists for very popular books apply in Johnston, where the libraries have fewer copies to serve Johnston's fewer residents and all copies of both books were checked out and all had a waiting list. 3. By this time, the copies we own are all checked out, but someone can be first on our waiting lists. I love to point out to frustrated Johnston residents, who are used to paying for a Wake Library card and driving into Wake, there are more than 180,000 local book alternatives owned by our residents and permanently housed at 40/42's Cleveland Library, operating as an educational function of a recognized public charity, plus the $710,000 in new books that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt gave us as a public charity to give away (FREE) to anyone to increase the number of books in local homes. We have a history of giving away hundreds of new sports and adventure books from publishers to schools and public libraries all across the state over the past 9 years and thousands of children's books in Johnston and Wake. The latest posted annual report from Johnston County shows they didn't lend any books to libraries out of the county (no demand? policy? or didn't complete the report?), and they only borrowed 225. We are not even 4 years old and we lend books out of the county regularly. We've offered to lend books to other libraries in and out of Johnston, when a need was brought to our attention. They say, "No." We just think it is good customer service to offer assistance to reduce waiting time, so we started mentioning our service directly to the people. We've also returned hundreds of stolen/missing books to their home libraries. They don't fuss so much about that. Our next attempt to "book" the neighborhood is the 7-day a week book sale, which reduces our duplicates, increases shelf space, and raises money for new books and the rent. Come help us serve our neighbors.
