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Delivering local library books to your doorstep

lurebees.com

31–35 of 35 posts

Re: Delivering local library books to your doorstep

#31
post #7

How does delivery work? Is it by car or by bike? At fixed times or on demand? Since the pandemic started here, the local library has partnered with bicycle couriers for delivery of books. They even worked out a way to be subsidized by the city to make delivery more affordable for the customers. This is in Germany though, and our denser cities seem to be more suited to bike couriers than sprawling American cities migh…

Thank you so much for your reply and interest.

Our drivers would need a cars since books can be heavy and majority of the customer will place large numbers of holds.

We have three different orders customers can put in. Pickup only, pickup/return and return only. Each order is 6.50.

Local libraries around the US don't have the budget or capacity to start delivery service for the entire county. Our tax money doesn't stretch that far when it comes to library services.

Re: Delivering local library books to your doorstep

#32

This sounds like a lovely service, but my library requires the cardholder to be present when checking out books. My father tells stories of living in Las Vegas in the late 70s when the local public library already provided this service for free to all patrons.

Thank you so much for your interest and reply. This can change in future due to demand of books delivery.

Re: Delivering local library books to your doorstep

#33

As soon as COVID is over, I’m planning to bring my kids to the library in person because it’s a whole experience. Do you have any plans beyond COVID for keeping the service running?

I grew up in Dunfermline, which was Andrew Carnegies birthplace, and was one of the first places to have a Carnegie library. It was/is an amazing library - in fact i got most of my uni books on loan there I used it a lot growing up - and make a point of using libraries even over buying books because i think access to libraries is so important and when people don't use libraries it will be used as an excuse to defund…

Thank you so much for your interest and reply. I 100% believe that everyone should have access to local libraries.

Re: Delivering local library books to your doorstep

#34
post #2

Please share your feedback for any improvement or dislike.

I could be wrong but the price seems too high. If you find the same, I would consider doing a bit of market research estimating how much people use the library at areas particularly far from the library, and estimating a price you would need to make it work with batched deliveries (kind of like garbage day, your library day is...). Then set your price based on that and see if it takes off.

Thank you so much for your reply and interest. Yes, we do see batch pickup being ideal for us and driver to be profitable.

Re: Delivering local library books to your doorstep

#35

How do you handle returning books? Is there another charge for that, and how does pickup work?

Thank you for your reply and interest. We have three different orders our customer can place. 1. Pickup only from library $5.99 2. Pickup from library & Drop off books to library $5.99 3. Drop off only to library $5.99
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