I honestly do not know what my family would do without our local library. My husband and I are avid readers on a wide range of topics and our children love to be read to. In any given week, the four of us have a total of over 100 items checked out. There is no way we could ever afford to support our reading habit if we had to buy all these books. Books are just the beginning at today's libraries, however. We also take out magazines and videos and DVDs for both the kids and ourselves. You can check out a wide range of music on CD. There are also storytimes and activities for children and classes for adults on a regular basis. Computers can also be used for free.
If you haven't been to a library since the days when you had to look things up in a physical card catalog, you might be amazed at the capabilities of today's libraries. While I realize library systems no doubt vary in different parts of the US, in my state of Massachusetts, all the libraries are connected. You can request any circulating item in any library via your home internet connection and it will be sent to the library of your choice for you to pick up. This is an amazing service that we make use of regularly. Searching online for the items we are looking for is a great time-saver. Long gone are the days when you had to physically travel to library after library to see if they had what you were looking for and whether it was already checked out by somebody else.
Yes, on occasion we do return an item late, and once or twice we have even lost a book leading us to make a "donation" to the library to cover the cost. But the value we get from the library can not even begin to be quantified. They are a treasure just waiting to be discovered.