[SABRMnLgs]

I moved here a few years ago to retire and delve into my second love after music. And that is research. Baseball research to be exact. As I have been doing research since the 1970s, I am quite familiar with library setups and services. From Illinois to Maine to Florida I have sent for and received material via ILL for my research purposes. I even have my own microifilm reader.

After the above mentioned libraries, I have found the Villages library to be among the DREGS for doing any kind of real research. Example: When my wife and I lived in Oviedo (Seminole County, FL), I was able to order microfilmed newspapers to my local library on line via ILL . When the microfilm came in, my local library me via email. I went to the library and picked up the reels of film. When finished with the microfilm, I returned them to the library where they then were returned to the original lending library.

I understand the Villages Library is fairly new so I expected state-of-the art
services. I mentioned the above listed example to the librarian at the Villages Library when we moved here. The blank look she gave me appeared as though I was telling her a story from a science-fiction magazine. I was there only once ...... my research was put on the skids by this country library and now I do everything via computer. Thank God many newspapers now are being digitized. And while there are some excellent libraries out there, in my humble opinion, the Villages lIbrary is not among them. It is nowhere near a full service library.