Lately, a lot of the library forums and email lists I follow have been talking about printing the “amount saved” on every checkout receipt. Your Pryor Library has had this feature for over a year and it’s pretty remarkable to examine how much the library saves us.
Your “amount saved” is calculated by adding up the list price for each item you’ve checked out. For instance, if you check out 6 kids books and a DVD, your amount saved is around $142. I know this because it’s what I’ve got on my account right now. This means that had I gone to Barnes & Noble (or another retail establishment) and bought the same items I checked out from the library, I would have spend about $142.
If this trend continues, by the end of the year, using the library will have saved my family $1,800. (provided my four-year-old doesn’t color in any more library books.)That’s a lot of money we can then spend on groceries, clothes, school supplies, LEGO sets, etc.
In addition to keeping track of how much money the library saves each of our patrons each year, our system keeps track of how much we’ve saved all of our patrons together. I ran a quick report looking at the last six months (Aug. 1 through Feb. 11). The Pryor Public Library has saved our patrons $331,089.64 total. In the first 11 days of February, we saved our patrons almost $18,000. That’s $1,636 a day!
The “amount saved” calculation does not include things like research and other assistance from our staff, ebooks or audiobooks downloaded from Overdrive, our Ancestry.com subscription, or internet and wifi usage – all services that are widely used and provided at no cost to you.
I often tell people, “The Library is the best deal in town.” This is my evidence to justify that statement. Be sure to look at your “amount saved” on the bottom of your receipt!