Public Libraries were the original Freemium model.
Public Libraries were the original Freemium model.
Free to read all you want in-house, but if you want to take some home, you gotta pony up for that card.
Fortunately the card was usually cheap.
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I've never heard of a library card costing anything. But I guess I'm not really surprised if that happens somewhere.
Where I live, it's free for school children and people on welfare etc. For university students it's 5€ a year, for adults it's 10€.
So really not a lot, but you also get access to a lot of other online services for free (encyclopedia, streaming service for older and arthouse films, magazines etc.)
Late fees are just there to keep you from keeping a book or whatever for long periods of time, because then other wouldn't be able to read them.
My library charges 1€ initially to cover for the cost of the card, then it’s free to use no matter what income, age,…
when i was a kid, we lived on the 'wrong' side of a county line, and thus, in a different township than was part of the nearest (7 miles away) public library's "service area"... tax sources, jurisdictions, and all that jazz. it was outrageously expensive to get an 'out of area' library card.. at least that's what i was told. we never had one.
so our library was a tiny rural library that was housed in an old one-room school house. it was open only a few hours a day, a couple days a week; instead of the 7 days a week at the public library in town (an original carnegie library).
the library where i live gives you 1 card for free, but you have to pay a dollar if you need to replace it