We all know how steep the cost of living in Toronto is, so\u00a0any hack to save a little cash here and there can prove\u00a0wildly helpful, including one often-overlooked tip: simply reaping\u00a0the benefits of your\u00a0local public library.<\/p>\n
Instead of spending $25+ to purchase your next read, you can check out any book\u00a0for free from a Toronto Public Library (TPL) branch, along with enjoying the other perks<\/a> of a library card, which range from quiet study space and free-of-charge classes to\u00a0other types of programming and events, computer and printing services,\u00a0and more.<\/p>\n It’s a savvy way to cut back on spending, especially for avid readers, courtesy of the city’s taxpaying citizens. But some\u00a0TPL frequenters have flagged a major caveat: that wait times for certain\u00a0books have grown\u00a0excessively long.<\/p>\n A local\u00a0user shared on Reddit\u00a0<\/a>this week that Bill Bryson’s best-selling 2003 audiobook,\u00a0A Short History of Nearly Everything, had a whopping 2,042 people on its waitlist to check\u00a0out from TPL when they attempted to borrow the title.<\/p>\n Though they stated that they love the TPL and the resources it provides, as well as\u00a0the Libby ebook and audiobook app that the library uses, they have been waiting to get their hands (or ears, rather) on this particular title for an unfathomable six years.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Three years to go, I guess?” they joked.<\/p>\n 2,042 people are waiting for the same copy at Toronto Public Library<\/a> Although the library’s limited audiobook stock may not be the most riveting topic you’ll find on the Toronto subreddit, the post\u00a0drew hundreds of upvotes and comments, with some sharing similar wait times for this and other titles.<\/p>\n “Earlier this year, I finally got my copy of In A Sunburned Country [by Bill Bryson] after going on the list in December of 2019,” one person wrote. “Unfortunately, I was reading something else at the time and I let my hold lapse. See you in 2030.”<\/p>\n Another compared these wait times\u00a0to trying to secure covered Toronto Blue Jays playoff tickets.<\/p>\n The TPL itself chimed in to explain the difficult and expensive process of getting the licensing rights for some books, especially when it comes to\u00a0virtual copies.<\/p>\n “For physical items, we have a 6 holds\/1 copy target, but we have to give up on that for popular ebooks and audiobooks,” the official Reddit account for the institution said.<\/p>\n They gave the example of Michelle Obama’s Becoming, for which, to\u00a0meet the 6\/1 target, the TPL “would have had to spend $43K on\u00a0copies\u00a0of the ebook and $54K on the audiobook,” along with “having\u00a0to do\u00a0it all over again in a few years since publishers require libraries to repurchase some digital titles after a certain amount of time\/usage.”<\/p>\n A representative further stated to blogTO that it’s very uncommon for books to have this many holds at the TPL.<\/p>\n “For both these titles, we can’t meet the demand because the title is no longer available for us to license,” they said over email.<\/p>\n In the last few years<\/a>, other residents have taken to social media<\/a> to ask about what they consider to be\u00a0longer wait times for holds than they’re used to. In those conversations, one suggestion to bypass the lineup was to check individual branches for a “Best Bets” copy, which are, per the TPL website<\/a>, special “copies of popular, high-demand adult fiction and nonfiction books. They are available for browsing in library branches. You can’t place holds on them.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We all know how steep the cost of living in Toronto is, so\u00a0any hack to save a little…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":312569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[13978,1022,171,28607,3716,12647,8790,157565,67,132,68,7827],"class_list":{"0":"post-312568","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-book","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-hold","12":"tag-library","13":"tag-public","14":"tag-toronto","15":"tag-tpl","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-years"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115393419359583336","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nbyu\/catladynina<\/a> intoronto<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n