We've had a great library from early on. (1) Does it get much use: Not as much as I would have expected. The main use it gets is to stack up books for members to put their monitors or laptops on (ugh). (2) How do you track boosk: we just have a sheet on each bulletin board where member should write their name, the name and author of the book, the date they borrowed the book, and the date they returned the book. We've certainly lost some books that are dear to me (my bad keeping that kind of book in the space). We've also had a handful of non-members assume they can borrow books, which have been harder to track down. We also have a spreadsheet on the website where all members can see the list of books and sort or search by author, title, topic, location.
(3) anything else you should know: My sense is that the main "pro" of having the library is the impression it gives (sort of like 24/7 access: people love that it's there, even though very few people actually take advantage of it). It also adds a nice feel to the space that there are nice books on the shelves, and they do get browsed when folks are taking breaks from work, which is nice. Cons: I actually put my entire collection of books in the space and there are a lot of books that were really expensive and are dear to me. It bugs me to see these books being primarily as monitor stands and not being put back where they were taken from. I guess I'm too attached to the books and for me they don't get used enough or with enough love to be worth it. If you really care about the books, I'd think twice. If you don't really care about them, then be careful to make sure they're nice books worth having on the shelf or they don't add much value in my opinion. I would echo the other warnings about people dumping books. I don't think people do it on purpose, it's just that it's hard to throw away books that once had great value, and "donating" them seems like it's doing something good. But it's worth being selective. For the most part, we've had great books donated to the space. But there are stacks of reference books that are completely obsolete that we've just recycled. On Tuesday, November 29, 2016 at 5:29:56 PM UTC+1, Tyler Byrd wrote: > > I'm thinking about adding a community library to our space. Specifically 5 > or 6 book cases full. If you've done something similar I've got a couple > questions for you. > > > 1. Do you find it get's much use? > 2. How to you track books and who has them? Software? > 3. Anything else I should know? > > Thanks! > -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
