Home Educator Library Tickets-your thoughts and experiences, please...

[FillyjonkTheFireEater]

Anyone know anything about this?

I am 80% sure that my LA does not offer these, but then our librarians are quite surreally incompetant and very rude , especially to mothers with small children . So perhaps they just don't know, or are too curmugonly to tell me.

Anyway. So I am going to write to the Boss of The Library and request one. But I need to know what they do elsewhere.

So:

Do you have one? What does it give you? Do you get stuff like no fines, longer borrowing periods, free interlibrary loans etc? Also, is it an extra family ticket on top of your existing ticket?

And does it mean that the lirbarians are nicer to you (god ours are horrible, it makes me so cos libraries should be lovely fizzy warm spaces IMO)

ah come on now

surely you have nothing better to do on a Friday night?

Hi,
I don't have a HE library ticket but the junior ticket allows us to get up to 8 books out at a time and there's no fine for overdue books.
The librarians are quite friendly although they do still give us strange looks on a Tuesday morning when I'm there with my 7 yr old.

During the summer holidays they did a 'Reading Mission' where kids were expected to read 6 books in the holidays. At the end of the holiday I commented that the 6 books she had on her "reading mission' card were read in the first week.
The librarian sighed huffily, " The whole point was to encourage reading over the WHOLE holiday!!"

My reply,
"Yes she read THESE books in the first week, she read another 6 books EACH week of the holiday, thats 36 BOOKS!"

I still don't think she got it!!!

What are the benefits of a HE library ticket? At the moment we have the child ticket for each child (8-10 books on each ticket, I think), renewable up to 3 times if no-one is waiting for the books. They don't incur a fine if overdue. 5 children, that's around 40 to 50 books that we could get out (We don't as I wouldn't be able to keep track of where they were). That's plenty enough for us to be going on with at the moment.

well the main ones for me would be a. extended borrowing periods and b. no fines (our libraries fine kids taking adult books out and IMO a lot of helpful books to HErs are in the adult section).

also, I would hope for free music, talking book , dvd/video and language tape loans. And interlibrary loans. This is what I would like.

Another ticket would be nice actually. I have 2 kids and we do a library run each week (to big, nice library, have given up on local) and my kids easily get through 16 books a week. Easily. We spend a good 2-3 hours a day reading, with them, an hour at bed time...I always have to sub them spaces on my card...and I like to read too...

As a family we spend a lot of time trawling boot sales and charity shops for books.We have quite a good library of our own now! Unfortuneately, (or fortuneately for us) people do not value books and they can usually be bought for a few pence.
Because of library fines on adult books, (I'm very forgetful) it is cheaper to just buy them this way. And I feel like I'm doing my bit for charity and the enviroment!

Juule I agree having to keep track of so many books to take back to the library in my messy house would be a nightmare!

ooh but libraries are fantastic...

or they should be...

um...

So not only does no one else have one, no one else would want one?

(oh ps the best cheap secondhand books are, IMO, in the libray. 10p for the ladybird book of weights and pulleys. And so on )

I've got one, as I think you know Filly

we get free inter library loans, erm I think it is 12 items or whatever with no fines, ever, free DVDs, videos and CDs, erm...I think that's it. It is fab. I would definitely write and find out, because it sounds like your librarians are just being arses.

The librarians are no nicer when you have the card, IME but then ours are already lovely to begin with, truly.

Oh yes you can borrow books for 12 weeks as well

erm but as there are no fines it is sort of just the icing on the cake

Oh and we just got given a new ticket on top of our existing tickets, I think.

franny, as I think you alrady know

yes I thought it was you that had one.

but you were the only person I could think of, and seeing as how HESFES was near you already I was a bit concerned that Essex might be a hotbed of HE radicalism and thus atypical.

oh and we keep library books etc in a designated box

I am most strict in this matter

they come out to be read, that is all

and if books get read a lot we buy them

Ooh, didn't know these existed!

Will enquire at our library next week.

Thanks for the tip.

We don't use our local library much as we have read everything they have many years ago, but as home educators we do get to use the School library service which is just great! We can borrow 35 books per "teacher" so as dh and I go together that means we can borrow 70 books at a time. We can keep them for a term, but no one bothers if they are late back, no fines. There are cds, videos and project packs that we can borrow too. There is a fantastic choice of books, far more than any of the branch libraries, and the librarians are really friendly. As we have been going for around 20 years, they follow our kids progress and chat to us about them - my ds even went out with one of the younger librarians for a couple of years - they were all devastated when they broke up

I'm not a home educator but I know that at my local library if you HE you have access to the Education Resource centre which is the area downstairs where they sort out all the books for the schools in the area. I'm not sure if an HE card is charged fines for overdues books but I do know that they get a longer loan uasually about 3 months I think. You could ask if you could speak to the schools department co-orditnator as they should have one, surely if it's a main library the topic boxes and subject books for schools will be sent from there and the person in charge will be the person to speak to about your situation.