Link +

My Tuesday morning responsibility is to be a "picker" for the Carmichael Branch of the Sacramento Public Library. Pam Brown and I spend about 2 hours pulling books off the shelves that have been requested by one of the library patrons. Usually the requestor is a patron of one of the other Sacramento County branch libraries but it can also be a patron of the Carmichael Branch. We usually have to find and pull 160 to 200 books which are listed 6 to a page on a printout we get each Tuesday morning. I think we have the largest list of all the days because the Carmichael library is closed on Monday so we're really picking 2 days worth of requests.

Lately, in addition to the printed lists of 160 to 200 books, we've been getting bright green sheets, one book per page. These represent the newest addition to the library services called Link +. Our county library system has joined 48 other libraries in the state to provide the same service. So now I can request a book not just from the 27 other branches of the Sacramento county library system but throughout the state. Most of the other participants are universities but a half dozen are large cities such as Berkeley or Riverside.