(My library system features it on the 'contact us' page.) When requesting a purchase, you'll need to provide a few simple details like your name, your library card number, and the title, publisher, and publication date of the book. So why not make a suggestion for how they should use the book budget?Ī Request-to-Purchase form can be found on the websites of most libraries and is easy to fill out. Typically, librarians would rather use their book-buying funds to purchase materials that people want to read instead of just eeny-meeny-miny-moeing their way through a book catalog and picking something at random. Since they are publicly funded by tax dollars, libraries receive a monthly budget for buying books. What they often forget to acknowledge, however, is that every tax-paying citizen has the power to do something about that.

(This is one of the primary reasons I started the Biblio-files community-to provide book lists that other Christian parents can trust.)Ĭritics of the public library complain that there aren't any decent books on the shelves anymore. Why? Because I know that when armed with discernment and good book suggestions, a mom can use the library as a one-stop shop for everything they need to teach a child. Truth be told, there was an entire season of our homeschool when I opted not to bring my children to the library at all, but instead, pre-ordered all the books I wanted and then picked them up when they were culled from the shelves and ready to be checked out.īut, I've never stopped utilizing the public library. I'd be lying if I said that nothing like this has ever happened again. Please see my disclosure policy for full details.) Over the next few days, the conversation continued up the chain of command until the book was eventually re-shelved in the YA section. I made an immediate bee-line for the circulation desk to lodge a verbal complaint with a librarian. Several years ago, when my then-preschooler and I were perusing the 'new to the children's shelves' section together, he stumbled into a forward-facing picture book with a blood-thirsty zombie on the cover and naturally began crying. With the recent rise of irreverent, sexualized, and agenda-laden books being added to the juvenile sections of local public libraries, you may be tempted to cut up your membership card and abandon the stacks.

Libby library