Sense, Nonsense, and Not-Sense

I'm sorry that so many people live in places that don't properly support their libraries. The line about schools and libraries getting everything they wanted and the police having to hold a bake sale certainly rings true in this situation. (And even more so in those systems that must convince a municipal budgeter that they will get more money and better services by funding their libraries, rather than buying their police a military surplus armored personnel carrier.)

I won't lie and say that $100+ for a non-resident card is easy to pull together all at once, especially for people who really need library services because they can't afford other things. Most people I would expect to be covered by some library district, whether municipal or regional, and those systems should have resource sharing options, even if they're not the fastest, and those things are already covered by the property taxes paid as a resident of the district, so getting a card with your local library district, and any others that offer free reciprocation, is getting something that's already been paid for.

(This does assume the place where you live has bought library services or maintains a library of their own. There are places that do neither of these things, and I wish they had "NO FREE LIBRARY SERVICE" put on all of their real estate listings in big red letters, so people know that going in, rather than finding out when they try to get library cards.)