Maintain Sarasota County Library Inter-library Loan Program

Sarasota County Florida offers some of the best library services in the country. One of the services we enjoy is the ability to request a book from any Sarasota Country branch of the library and have it transferred to the branch closest to our home or place of work. However, recent state budget cuts have resulted in a new policy that will allow library patrons only request three transfer/hold requests -- ever.







This policy unfairly hurts taxpayers who live close to one of the smaller library branches. It makes it difficult for parents of busy school age children and the elderly to have access to books, tapes and videos found at other branches.







It also forces us to spend more time driving to distant branches -- residents of Sarasota, for example, could be forced to drive to North Port or Venice for the book they want, and vice versa. With gas prices at an all-time high, mounting concerns about global warming, and greater congestion on Sarasota County roads, this is the wrong time to force us to drive to other branches.







We are urging our state legislators to work with Sarabeth Kalajian, General Manager of the Sarasota County Public Libraries, to maintain an interlibrary loan service that meets the needs of our county taxpayers.