Libraries! Libraries! Libraries!

By Faye Herold, Library  Cochair, originally published in the June 2023 issue of the 1666 Coffman Newsletter

Part I:  How lucky we are to have a large in-house library for all of us to use. The Coffman Library is well-organized, well-cared for, and always has an eye (or
thirteen pairs of eyes) to improvement. And not too far in the future, it will be online, with authors, titles, and subjects accessible to us needy readers.

Now let’s look beyond the Coffman Library to a world of books, CDs, DVDs, and other materials, beginning with our local (suburban) Ramsey County Library. We are all eligible for a free library card that we can use at the library or online from our  homes  (rclreads.org). We can:

• Borrow books or a raft of materials in various formats
• Request items for pickup
• Check out the Friends of Ramsey County Library bookstore
• Attend a program (see the bi-monthly “Explore” magazine)
• Join a book club
• Browse extensive audio and video collections

• Download e-books and e-audiobooks
• Read a magazine
• Rent a bestseller
• Ask for Mail Out Service if you can’t get to the library
• Query a reference librarian

Also for you, Ramsey County Library subscribes to Consumers’ Checkbook online for customer ratings of Twin Cities’ businesses and service providers. Use it from home with your library card. This is a resource all of us condo residents can use.

Part II: In Part I, I suggested going beyond Coffman Library to our local Ramsey County Public Library (rclreads.org) for books and other resources not available here. But what to do when we want something not owned by our local public library? Want to use the Saint Paul Public Library in St. Anthony Park? Hennepin County Libraries? You may register your Ramsey County library card with any of seven metro area library systems, and get most of the same library privileges as their residents. Once you have registered, materials from those libraries can be delivered to Roseville Library.

Our regional library system, MELSA (Metropolitan Library Service Agency, melsa.org) promotes cooperation between libraries and funds programs and resources for its members. MELSA pays for things like Libby, by Overdrive, for ebooks, e-audiobooks and e-magazines. MELSA funds ALLDATA online for all your car repair needs, and the library edition of ancestry.com for expanded family history research. These databases and more are available via the Ramsey County Library website, although Ancestry and ALLDATA must be used in the library.

What else? To move beyond our metro area public libraries via your local library website, go to MNLINK.org, and search for and request materials from most of Minnesota’s public, college, and university libraries. They will be delivered to your
home library for pickup. The MNLINK system also provides access to electronic resources that are available to Minnesotans, including electronic journals, images, and e-books.

Then there is worldcat.org. “By connecting thousands of libraries’ collections in one place, WorldCat.org makes it easy for you to browse the world’s libraries from one easy search box…. Do a search, click on a result, and you’ll see a list of libraries that have told us they have that resource.” To use WorldCat, you need to contact a  librarian at Ramsey County Library by phone or click on the Ask a Librarian link.

We have a world of libraries at our fingertips.