Another Economic Bellwether

During tough times library usage increases and I am really seeing that at my library. We have an intra-county system where you can borrow or place holds on any material and at any library in the county (county library or city owned library) and return it and our central sorting will send it back to the right library. Since my office is up at county central I can see how many bins the sorters have to go through and deliver each day. In the last 6 months the bins have almost doubled. In the morning when I come in I can barely make it to my desk because of all the gray bins and that's with reduced book buying. As far as jobs go, my library position is pretty secure. I may start to see a tougher time getting the money to buy all the outreach give away books and materials than I've gotten used to but at least my paycheck is secure. Worse case scenario is they'd send me to one of the branches (and I am making SURE the branches like me by offering to cover other peoples story times and giving away lots of Saturday's for outreach events).

That said I am still worrying. I am thinking of looking for a second, very part-time job. Just in case.