Five books for a dollar. That’s the going rate at the sale shelf here, and the regulars treat it as a standing arrangement. One couple described adding to their home library in a big way, buying from that shelf, and finding things they described as cool. Twenty-five cents a book is an invitation to take a risk on something you’d never otherwise pick up. That’s how most people find the authors they end up loving.
Of all the prices in this series, a quarter a book is my favorite. I’d defend a sale shelf like this against any budget committee that wanted the floor space back, because it’s the cheapest way anyone has found to turn a curious person into a reader.
What is Tarpon Springs Public Library?
The city library at 138 East Lemon Street in Tarpon Springs, Florida, in the historic downtown a couple of blocks from the shops on Tarpon Avenue. The phone is 727-943-4922 and the site is tarponlibrary.org. One hundred and forty Google reviews at four point five.
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
It’s a member of the Pinellas Public Library Cooperative, so the card works county-wide, holds can be placed from home, and interlibrary loan reaches beyond the local shelves.
The building carries the usual: books, CDs, DVDs, a children’s room people describe as good, public computers that are easy to get on, and printing at ten cents a page for black and white.
The staff are the thing reviewers lead with, more than at any other library on this list. One long-time user opened with the friendliest staff you could ever hope for, and the phrase turns up again and again in different words.
Museum passes
This is the service almost nobody knows about and everybody should.
Twenty-five cents a book is an invitation to take a risk on something you’d never otherwise pick up.
Pinellas libraries lend passes to local museums. You check one out like a book, use it, bring it back. One visitor reported getting a library card and checking out a museum pass in the same visit. That’s roughly ten minutes of paperwork for an afternoon out. For a family in this county that’s a meaningful amount of money. For somebody researching a subject, it’s access to collections and exhibits without an admission line item.
Far too few people know this exists. Families pay admission out of pocket for years while a pass sits in the catalogue a mile away, free for the asking. Nobody advertises it loudly enough, so if you know about it, tell somebody. Passes get reserved, so the practical advice is to look at the catalogue before you plan around one.
Movie days and the rest of the calendar
The library runs movie days, and they screen properly recent releases instead of whatever has fallen out of copyright.
Alongside that the usual children’s programming runs, and the young adult section gets requests from its own readers. One teenager wrote in asking for more manga in the young adult area, naming specific titles. That’s a small and completely charming piece of evidence that the collection belongs to the people using it.
Whether they act on that request is up to the selectors. That a teenager thought to ask says something about how the building feels.
I’m with the teenager. A young adult shelf that listens to its own readers is worth ten built from a committee’s idea of what teenagers ought to want, and a kid asking for more manga today is an adult with a library card in twenty years.
What does Tarpon Springs Public Library offer writers?
Two things.
The sale shelf is the cheapest research in the region. Any writer working on a period, a place or a subject needs a stack of general reading around it. At twenty-five cents a volume you can buy wide and discard freely. That’s exactly the right way to read into a topic you don’t yet understand.
The second is the town itself. Tarpon Springs has the sponge docks, the Greek community that built them, and more than a century of material that almost nobody has written properly. A city library in a place like that holds the local collection, and the reference staff know where the rest of it is.
This one excites me. The sponge docks and the families who built them are a story sitting in plain sight, and it frustrates me that nobody has written the definitive book. If you’ve been hunting for a subject with real people in it, it’s a few blocks from this library’s front door. For getting your own work onto these shelves, the piece on Pinellas library shelves covers how the selectors buy and what they need from you.
When is Tarpon Springs Public Library open?
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday from ten in the morning until eight at night. Thursday and Friday ten until six. Saturday ten until five. Closed Sunday. Three nights until eight is generous, and it matches Dunedin further down the coast. The ten o’clock opening is the constraint. This isn’t an early-morning building. Lemon Street sits in the historic downtown, so parking is street and small lots, and everything around the library is walkable. The sponge docks are a short drive west.
The obvious pairing is The Gilded Page on East Court Street, a few minutes away. That opens at eleven every day and has a reading lounge with a giant chess set. Library for the used shelf and the museum pass, bookshop for the new releases and the couches.
Where it sits
North Pinellas libraries each do something the others don’t.
Palm Harbor is the independent district library with the separate children’s wing. Dunedin is the big one with the mystery stamps and adult summer reading. The Clearwater branches run on a shared city system.
Tarpon Springs is the small-town library with the best prices and the friendliest reputation, in the most distinctive town in the county. It’s also the northern end of the line. Past here you’re into Pasco.
My take
Someone should write the definitive book on the sponge docks, and this library is where I’d start. The families who built them are a story sitting in plain sight, and the reference staff know where the material is. Writers researching any subject should raid the sale shelf, where five books cost a dollar and you can buy wide and discard freely. Grab a museum pass while you’re there. Plan around the ten o’clock opening, and skip Sunday.
Twenty-five cents
A library is measured in circulation figures and budget lines and none of that is what anybody remembers.
What people remember is a shelf where books cost a quarter, a museum pass handed over with a new card, a movie day showing something that was in cinemas last year, a teenager confident enough to ask for better manga, and staff that strangers describe as the friendliest they could hope for. Those things cost almost nothing and they’re the entire reason a town keeps a library. (See also where to write in Tarpon Springs) Any city council tempted to judge this building by its budget line should spend an hour watching the quarter shelf. Tarpon Springs has a small library doing big work for pocket change, and I’d put its price list up against any bookstore in Florida.
