Tulsa City-County Library

"When you open a book, you can go anywhere, be anyone, achieve anything.  A book is a doorway to other worlds".  This is one of the very first lessons my dad ever taught me.  To say my dad read a lot was like saying it gets a little warm here in the summer.  The man read constantly and his love of books was the greatest gift he ever gave me.  I never go anywhere without a book and with the recent acquisition of my Kindle - I now have the ability to have several books with me at any given time.

I'd always loved the library but really, bookstores were more my thing.  Libraries were dusty, had a slight odor of mold, and all the books seemed to be five years out of date.  Bookstores though - now that was the ticket!  They were bright and shiny, it smelled new, and had all the latest bestsellers.

But then something happened.  I bought my home and wouldn't you know it - right around the corner was the Brookside branch of the Tulsa City-County Library.  So one afternoon, while I was "busy" at work, I decided to check out the library online.  I was amazed.  Here were all the latest bestsellers available to me with just the click of a mouse.  Why hadn't I realized that the library was this great?  Why had I waited so long to check this out?  What was my problem?

That afternoon I stopped at my local branch and got my first, official, Tulsa City-County Library card.  The next day, the search was on.  I started requesting books left and right.  Some were available right away and those that weren't - I was simply placed on the waiting list.  And I requested that they be delivered to my library so I wouldn't have to go out of my way.  Basically - it was like bringing the bookstore to me.

There are some drawbacks to using the library - sometimes you do have to wait a bit to read that latest bestseller and just because it's on the shelf at Barnes & Noble doesn't mean it's at the library - yet; sometimes the lag time is a couple of weeks.  But the amount of money I save every year is well worth these small annoyances.  Seriously - using the library probably saves me close to $700 each year and that's nothing to sneeze out.

The library system has also recently added e-books.  Although the collection is small, it's growing every day and most everything I've looked for is available.  The one complaint I have is that they have two sites working - one for traditional printed material and another site for electronic material.  But I've been assured that before long, the two sites will be integrated and work as one.

So get to your local library and check it out or go online at http://www.tulsalibrary.org/ (printed materials) or http://tulsa.lib.overdrive.com/ (electronic material).  Winter will be here before you know it and there's nothing like curling up on a chilly night with a great book.