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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

If everyone used the library as much as people say they are great, their shelves would be empty. Libraries have to be some of the most underutilized services.

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When it comes to recent popular movies, the wait times can be over 6 months. I'm usually number 480 on the waitlist or something.

I wouldn't call that underutilized. :-)

In my experience, there can be pretty high contention for certain items, so you need to be on the ball or make use of the "place hold" feature judiciously. Yeah, people are using the service.

Sadly, libraries in UK towns have very little shelf space left and what's on them is usually mass-market fiction, biography or very old non-fiction.

Honestly isn't worth the effort to visit my local one, unless I want to join a crochet club or do 'mindfulness' jigsaws.

In the US, libraries are often part of a network, and we have access to all the materials in the network. So if my local library doesn't have it, I simply request it from another library. They ship it to mine and I pick it up (and return to mine).

Then we also have a larger inter-library loan, where I can request things from libraries far, far away (even in another state). It takes much longer, though, and if it is deemed a popular/useful item, my local library may decide to purchase it and give that one to me rather than use ILL.

You may want to check if your local library has something similar.

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