Top Five Reasons to Get a Library Card

It's no secret that we are huge fans of books over here! In addition to a large collection of books at home, we go to the library almost weekly to get a new stack. 

Here are my top five reasons to become a Los Angeles Library card holder:

1. Access to more than 3 million books!! This is of course the number one reason to join any library. The Los Angeles Public Library system specifically has more than books 3 million books at the Central location alone! My favorite thing to do is look up a book I love on Amazon and then look at similar titles and go into my library account and add them to my list. Then as they show up I get a notice that they've arrived. It's super easy to use the online system and you can even put books on your request list and then decide what date you want them to arrive. This is another great way to reserve holiday books. 

2. Lynda.com account - Have you ever used Lynda? It's an online education platform similar to Skillshare where you can sign up for a variety of classes. Before we had our library accounts we paid for our Lynda accounts, so we were pleasantly surprised that LAPL actually gives you access to a free account. 

3. Kanopy - This new streaming service has a pretty amazing selection of movies. It's an educational streaming service so they focus on docs, foreign cinema, critical darling indies and a deep library of video courses. We just watched the doc "Half The Picture" on Kanopy and my mind was totally blown.

4. Discover & Go Program - Your library card can get you free or discounted admission to some of the top LA hot spots like The Broad, The Zoo, Kid Space Museum and The Discovery Cube. We used the program to get free zoo passes before we decided to take the plunge and buy ourselves an annual LA Zoo family pass.

5. Events - The library hosts some pretty amazing events throughout the year. From Drag Queen Story Hour in West Hollywood, to the amazing parent-and-me kids story hour at the Beverly Hills Library, to all the events at the downtown LA library (and the free art tours), there is something for everyone. We even went to a really cool podcast taping once downtown!

These are just five of the reasons why I personally love the library, but there are countless more for you to discover. I can talk about this all day, but libraries are so incredibly important to the community  (free tutoring, veteran services, career prep, etc) and we need to support them as much as possible. One of my favorite things to do when traveling is to check out the local libraries and see what they have to offer and how they compare with my beloved LAPL.

- Callie