Musing Mondays: Library books

This week's Musing Mondays prompt, from Just One More Page:

Do you have a system for borrowing out books from the library? Do you know what you're going to borrow before you get there? How often do you borrow out books?

It is rare that I have time to browse the library stacks and pick books at random. ABM used to drop me off once a month for an hour and I would find as many books as I could. With work and kids and such, I don't have the chance to do that any more.

My library's online reserve system, which has only been in place for a little over a year, has been instrumental in bringing more books into my house. I go online and reserve books and ABM picks them up. He likes this because he doesn't have to find time in his schedule to take me to the library; he can just pick them up on the way home. I like it because I no longer feel rushed when picking out books.

Since we have several readers in the house, ABM goes to the library every week. My kids read pretty quickly, so I like to have a fresh supply of books on hand for them. Also, half the books I reserve are rejected as soon as I see them. When I went to the library personally, I could flip through a book and know right away if it was for me. Now I pick books based on a brief description or a friend's recommendation.

The way I reserve books has changed since I started Goodreads. Previously, I would check the library's site for a book as soon as I heard about it and reserve it if they had it. I did this so I wouldn 't forget about the book. Since October, I've been adding books to my Goodreads TBR shelf instead of requesting them right away. Now that I have over 100 titles on the list, my plan for 2009 is to reserve books from the top of the list while adding new books I've heard of to the bottom of the list. I haven't decided yet if I will delete books from the list that aren't available at my library. Maybe I will make a new list for them so I can check the library again later.