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" The library has always been a place to save money. Where else can you get books, CDs and DVDs without buying them? And these days libraries offer even more\u2014a host of activities and services that cost you nothing. As part of our annual Woman&amp;#039;s Day/ American Library Association essay contest, we introduce you to four winners who found big savings\u2014 and even changed their lives\u2014at their local library.   A World of Learning by Karen Schmidt, Camano Island, WA  By the time I began homeschooling our 8-year-old son, Jonathan, our community library was already a place of discoveries and spontaneous conversations with acquaintances. Both Jonathan and I had swarmed to the library (yes, two word lovers can swarm when it comes to books!) when we moved from South America back to the U.S. when he was 4. Our habits didn&amp;#039;t change much when he was reading on his own at age 6\u2014we were already confirmed library-ophiles. But homeschooling turned our local library\u2014first the Marysville Library, then when we moved a half-hour away, the Camano Island Library\u2014 into a resource center that has been a focal point for my son&amp;#039;s education.   The library was the place where Jonathan crawled into an inflatable planetarium to &amp;quot;stargaze,&amp;quot; thanks to a Friends of the Library program and the regional science center. He molded sculptures from recyclables, laughed at puppet shows, and not long after we studied insects, he ogled\u2014but refused to engage with\u2014a &amp;quot;Bug Chef,&amp;quot; who fried, saut\u00E9ed and baked bugs for a gawking group of elementary school\u2013age kids. Never was a science unit so memorable!   When Jonathan got older, I based history study on literature, not a textbook. So each weekend I logged on to the library&amp;#039;s website and requested the books, videos, music and other materials we would need for the coming week. After reading a Shakespeare play, at age 13, for example, and looking at visual renderings of English theaters during the Elizabethan period, Jonathan would watch a video of the play to make history come alive.   If essays required observational writing or a stack of reference books, we would stuff our school materials into backpacks at home and spend a couple of hours at the library. Homeschooling has been completely doable on a single wage-earner&amp;#039;s income largely because we have received so much for free from our library. We would never have been able to peruse the oversize art books of long-gone artists&amp;#039; works, listen to Gypsy music and ancient Hebrew chants, or read the vast breadth of books that have been the pedestal of Jonathan&amp;#039;s learning.   Today, as a teenager, Jonathan seems to most desperately appreciate the library&amp;#039;s high-speed Internet service, which we can&amp;#039;t acquire on our rural property. And we both still breathe in the refreshing change of scenery. On gloomy days or when school feels grittily tedious, we both perk up like potted plants being watered when one of us suggests, &amp;quot;How about going to the library?&amp;quot;      School&amp;#039;s In by Tammy Thomas, Stuarts Draft, VA  My public library literally helped put me through college! I was 34, and I had chosen to forgo school years before in order to work part-time and raise my children. But now that my sons would be entering high school, I started thinking that I wanted to be an English teacher. I had always enjoyed reading and writing, and loved volunteering at my sons&amp;#039; school. Still, money was tight and becoming a teacher seemed like an impossibility. Yet I couldn&amp;#039;t let go of the dream. I went to an open house at a nearby community college, just to get more information. I ended up taking a leap of faith and enrolling. I applied for financial aid and student loans for the tuition costs, and then collected the syllabi for my classes. That&amp;#039;s when I realized that I had made a serious miscalculation: I hadn&amp;#039;t counted on the cost of textbooks. They could cost anywhere from $50 to $250 each per semester, and I always needed at least three. For a family on an extremely tight budget, this expense was a real problem.   I looked around for used books, but even those were more than I could comfortably afford. So I decided to go to the Augusta County Library on a mission to keep my college dream alive. I got mixed results. While the library did have many of the books on the recommended reading list, they didn&amp;#039;t have the textbooks.   I decided to talk to the reference librarians to see if they had any suggestions. They explained that they might be able to get some of the books from college libraries in the state by means of an interlibrary loan. The suggestion was a lifesaver! From the time I started college until the time I graduated, I relied on interlibrary loans to help me get almost all of my textbooks. This saved me thousands of dollars.   In August 2000, I began my career as an eighth-grade language arts teacher, and I now also chair our school&amp;#039;s English department. I&amp;#039;ve also just completed my master&amp;#039;s degree in education administration, using interlibrary loans for my books, of course! My relationship with the public library has continued to grow. As a teacher, I view the library as a great community partner. Every year I arrange for the librarians to come to my school and tell my students about the wonderful books and programs available to them. In the summer, I have my summer-school students participate in the library&amp;#039;s summer reading program. The children enjoy hearing about exciting new books, and they love winning prizes for the hours they invest in reading. The library has been a wonderful resource for enriching my students&amp;#039; learning experience, and a great tool for a teacher with limited means. Last summer I volunteered at the library, which is suffering from funding cuts, to help repay the librarians for all they have done for me, my family and my students. It is my hope that my students, like me, will develop a lifelong love for their library.      Instant Entertainment by Stefanie Schmidt, Las Vegas  Being single and on a pretty tight budget, most of my expenses go toward necessities like rent, groceries and utilities. I don&amp;#039;t have much left over at the end of the month for fun stuff. When I moved three years ago from Long Beach, California, to Las Vegas to work as an educator at a dolphin habitat, I didn&amp;#039;t know anyone in Vegas. The Clark County Library became my sanctuary. As a child, I loved the library\u2014I could get a new book every week and have a quiet place to do my homework with all the references at my fingertips. Every book I read was like a new adventure, and I couldn&amp;#039;t wait to finish one book and check out another. What I didn&amp;#039;t realize until I moved to Las Vegas was how much free stuff there is at the library. I researched my new city, searched for a new place to live and even joined the library&amp;#039;s book club. Through the book club I began to meet people, and it didn&amp;#039;t cost me a dime because I just checked out the monthly book selection. I no longer felt alone\u2014the book club and the library helped me find friends in a town full of strangers.   Now, three years later, I still go to book club meetings, and since going out to the movies is expensive, some Saturday nights I go to the library f or its free movie screening. I can relax with a great show and socialize, too. I&amp;#039;ve also discovered the computer room. When the cable lines at my apartment went down for a few weeks, I thought I was going to be lost without the Internet, but the library came to my rescue. I just flashed my library card and I had instant access to my email. The library helps me so much by offering all these things. Not only has it saved me lots of money, but it enriches my life through my reading, meeting new people and having a lot of fun with the great programs. This has proven priceless.      Fix it for Free by Cassandra Robbers, Almond, NY  Not long after we decided to give up the hustle-bustle of suburban life in Buffalo, New York, and move to the tiny town of Almond, I found myself heading to the local library for an unlikely reason: Becoming a homeowner turned out to be much more expensive than my husband and I had imagined, especially since our &amp;quot;new&amp;quot; home was built in 1880. Luckily, the Almond 20th Century Club Library was stocked with books on how to do just about anything and everything\u2014 plumbing projects, tile projects, painting techniques, landscaping. I even installed a new shower in my bathroom including the piping, and built a coffee table from scratch with a tiled mosaic top. You see, when it comes to being frugal, I&amp;#039;m at the head of the class! My husband is a truck driver and the sole breadwinner for our family of six, so I find ways to squeeze an extra few dollars out of everything. I was very excited to take advantage of my new squeezable resource\u2014the library, which is small but has proven to be fantastic. It&amp;#039;s even within walking distance of our home, so I don&amp;#039;t have to spend gas money!   My love of the library doesn&amp;#039;t stop at the fix-it section. I&amp;#039;ve learned so much from books on sewing, cooking and gardening. Last year we had our first family garden, and the tips I read helped me turn my thumb a little greener and get my first garden off to a good start. I have also learned how to make wine, create extracts for baking and build wood trellises! This year, I&amp;#039;ll be checking out a field guide to edible wild plants, since the children and I are going to teach ourselves how to forage. Perhaps what I love best is the library&amp;#039;s director, Tammy Kokot, and her aide, Valerie Ewald, who always go the extra mile. I once asked Val for a book on shoemaking. There wasn&amp;#039;t one, but then on my way home, Val called and said she had found something. It was a chapter in a larger book and she just happened to remember it was about shoemaking\u2014amazing. Tammy has sent me many links on ways to grow my custom-designed handbag business (CaseyWasHere.com). She has put me in touch with local resources for financial help and business assistance. Because of the people who&amp;#039;ve helped me and the things I&amp;#039;ve learned at the library, I&amp;#039;ve been able to get my business up and running without spending a lot. I&amp;#039;ve also saved nearly $400 in home repairs in the past year. I&amp;#039;ve lived in many towns and cities, but Almond, New York, is where my family and I will stay. The library and the members of this community have made us feel so welcome, and through that, we have finally found home.    "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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