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Being a city boy, I grew up with access to a couple of good libraries. Heck, one of the branches was in the lower level of the first mall in our area of town. Eventually, that mall space became too expensive for a library, but by that time, I was older and mall book stores (B. Dalton's) were a thing.
Yea, I was a regular fixture at the library. It was actually within bike riding distance (several miles), so by the time I was 8 or 9, I was riding to the library on my own, something that likely would never happen these days. I would normally check out a stack, go home, read them and them bring them back a few days later for a new set. None of the books were particularly new books. I grew up reading adventure books from people like Joesph Altsheler and Jules Verne, i.e. books that were at least 50 years old when I was young.
When I was a teenager, I worked in the local library, helping with the children's program and shelving books. Once again, the children's program was heavy on crafts, bringing in people to show interesting stuff (the zoo brought in a lion cub, my job was to stay between the kids and the lion at all times. I usually skip the cub part of that when I tell that story. <grin> ) and occasionally reading to them. Not much on the latest and greatest though. The wonderful thing about kids is that, as Mick Jagger said, everything is new to them.
It's been a long, long time since I regularly went to a library and checked out a book. I have no real need to and generally libraries don't buy a lot of the genres that I read. I don't really expect them to. I generally think of libraries as a place where children are exposed to books and a place for research. I most likely have a much bigger selection of SF&F and military history in my personal collection than the local library has, it's certainly true of their ebook collection.
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