The Fort Kent Public Library has announced that patrons can order books from across the state at no charge.
“Before now, the Fort Kent Public Library had to charge our patrons for the postage to ship books for inter-library loans,” said Library Director Andrew Birden. “The consequence of this was that hardly anyone used inter-library loan in Fort Kent. Now people can use it without having to pay for shipping. It is free.”
Birden said he reached out to the Maine State Library, Bangor Public Library and the Blake Library at the University of Maine at Fort Kent to arrange a cost-neutral service.
“The Blake Library uses an established courier service to transport materials to university libraries and public libraries all across the state. We obtained permission and procedural guidance from the folks at the Maine State Library and the Bangor Public Library so that when our patrons order a book, it can also move across the state through the courier,” he said.
Since the courier service travels to the other libraries anyway, there is no need to add a delivery charge for the books FKPL patrons order.
To use this new service, people just need to become a patron of the library and let the library staff know the title and author of the book they would like to read. “Our staff, the great people at the Blake and the Bangor Public Libraries do the rest,” Birden said.
The Bangor Public Library usually sends the book, if it is available, within a week.
“This makes tens of thousands of books available to our readers, especially new titles, bestsellers and hard-to-find books, at no cost to our patrons. It’s a valuable service that regular readers can use to keep up with their favorite authors and topics,” Birden said.
Visit the Fort Kent Public Library to use the new ILL service.
