This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

How to make the most of your library card

Every day at the University City Public Library, people ask which library card they can use to check out books here. The answer should be straightforward, but it's not.

Every day at the University City Public Library, people ask which library card they can use to check out books here. The answer should be straightforward, but it’s not.

If you have a card at the University City Public Library, you can use that card at eight other independent libraries in the Municipal Library Consortium of St. Louis County. In addition to UCPL, the MLC includes the public libraries in: Brentwood, Ferguson, Kirkwood, Maplewood, Richmond Heights, Rock Hill, Valley Park and Webster Groves. Cards from each of those libraries work at UCPL.

All nine libraries share online resources such as databases and a collection of e-books and downloadable audiobooks, as well as an online catalog. Altogether, it gives our patrons access to more than 700,000 unique items (books, DVDs, CDs, etc) available right in your neighborhood.

Find out what's happening in University Citywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

What’s especially cool about this is that if UCPL doesn’t have the item that you want, but Ferguson does, you can request that the item be sent to UCPL so you can pick it up here. And if you’re in Kirkwood or Rock Hill on a day that your books are due, you can drop them off at the library there, where they’ll be checked in and sent back to us.

In addition to the MLC, the St. Louis metro area has three multi-branch library districts—the St. Louis Public Library in the city of St. Louis, St. Louis County Library in the county, and St. Charles City-County Library District in, you guessed it, St. Charles County. You can live in any of these districts and have a card for an MLC library (we have lots of patrons who live in the city of St. Louis or Clayton and have UCPL cards). And if you live in University City, you can get a card for free at any or all of those libraries too (you can feasibly have four separate public library cards, one for each district).

Find out what's happening in University Citywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

While there’s no cost to University City residents to get, for example, a St. Louis County Library card, it does cost our library 25 cents for every item one of our residents checks out from the county system. We charge the other library districts 25 cents for every item one of their residents checks out here, and at the end of the year, we tally everything up and whoever owes more pays the balance. Each year, we end up paying the St. Louis County Library thousands of dollars; think of how many more books and movies we could buy each year with that money!

So can you use your St. Louis County Library card here? No, but we encourage you to get a card with us too and make use of all the fantastic resources we have available. With books, CDs, DVDs, and more, we have the bestsellers you want now and the classics you’ll want again and again!

We’re open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. Visit our website at www.ucitylibrary.org. And keep checking Patch for more articles from us!

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

More from University City