How the library works

Library Rules

These rules govern membership of Pages Lending Library and borrowing from it. Joining means agreeing to them. Using this website is covered separately by the website terms of use.

1. Joining
2. Membership fees
3. Basic membership and deposits
4. Reading fees
5. How long you can keep a book
6. Looking after books
7. Reserving a book
8. Your member page and messages
9. Standing and ending a membership
10. Changes to these rules

1. Joining

1. Membership is capped at 150 readers. When the library is full, new members join as places come free.
2. You join in person at the library in Taramani. We take your name, a mobile number, and an email address.
3. You give us a photocopy of your Aadhaar card (the full card or the masked version, whichever you prefer) and one passport-size photograph. We copy your address from the Aadhaar into the library's records. The photocopy and the photograph are kept on paper in the library's member file, and are never scanned, photographed, or typed into any computer.
4. A membership is for one person and cannot be lent or passed on.
5. Children up to the age of 5 borrow on a parent's or guardian's membership. From 6 to 15, a child can have a child membership of their own, paid for and looked after by a parent or guardian who is a member: the parent's Aadhaar is the one on record, and the parent answers for the child's books. From 16, a member joins in their own right, on their own Aadhaar.
6. Tell us when your phone number, email, or address changes.

2. Membership fees

1. Paying the membership fee is a must to join the library. You are a member from the day your first fee is paid.
2. Your membership is active only while you have a valid membership plan: the period your membership fee has paid for, six or twelve months from the day you pay.
3. To stay a member, renew your membership fee before the plan ends. Renewing early loses nothing: the new period starts when the current one ends.
4. When a plan runs out without being renewed, the membership is no longer active. You can still return books, but not borrow them, and the library may cancel a membership that is not renewed.
5. The membership fee is paid by UPI or cash, and is not refunded.
6. Government school students borrow free, the one exception to the rules above. Their books come from a shelf kept for them, three at a time, and the librarian keeps a card of what each student has taken and brought back. There is no membership fee and no reading fee. Bring your school ID.
7. A government school student who would also like to borrow from the Basic set (section 3) can take a year's Basic membership for ₹150 instead of ₹250, and then pays reading fees like any member.

3. Basic membership and deposits

A membership without a deposit is a Basic membership. Basic members borrow from the Basic set: books the librarian has chosen, most of them for children, whatever they cost. Every other book goes out only to a member who has paid a deposit. The deposit stands behind the books while you have them, and is refundable.

1. The deposit is paid on top of the membership fee. Books in the Basic set never need one.
2. The prices of the deposit books you have out at once can add up to no more than your plan's limit, a little under the deposit. With Premium (₹500) you can take one book at ₹399 or below. With Elite (₹1,000) you can take one book up to ₹899, or two at ₹399. With Starlight (₹1,500) you can take one book up to ₹1,299, or three at ₹399.
3. A book's price is the one printed on it. Where there is none, the librarian looks up what the book costs new today, not what the library paid for it.
4. You can move up a plan at any time by paying the difference: from Premium to Elite is ₹500.
5. The deposit comes back when your membership ends, or once you have had 6 months of regular visits: 6 calendar months, not necessarily in a row, in each of which you borrowed or returned books on at least 2 different days. It is returned once every deposit book you have is back.
6. Anything you owe the library (unpaid fees, or a lost or damaged book) is taken out of the deposit before it is returned.
7. Once the deposit is returned, the dearer books close to you again until you pay a new one. The deposit earns no interest.

4. Reading fees

Every book you borrow carries a reading fee of 15% of the price printed on it, rounded up to the next ₹5, and never less than ₹10. It is paid when the book goes out.

Where a book has no printed price, the fee is worked out from what the book costs new today, and the librarian tells you before it goes out.

5. How long you can keep a book

1. A book is yours for 15 days for its reading fee, counting the day it goes out as day 1. Your receipt gives the date: a book that goes out on the 1st is due on the 15th.
2. You do not need to ask to keep a book longer. After the 15 days, each further week (7 days), or part of one, costs one more reading fee, taken when the book comes back. The charge stops growing at six weeks: no book ever costs more than five reading fees.
3. From day 23 a book is overdue, and no new books go out to you until it is back, whatever deposit you hold.
4. A book not back after six weeks (43 days) counts as lost (see section 6), and your membership is put on hold. While it is on hold you cannot borrow or reserve books, and your membership keeps running. Once every book is back or made good and what you owe is paid, the librarian takes the hold off.

After six weeks the charge stops growing, and the book counts as lost.

6. Looking after books

1. Bring books back in the state you took them. Do not write in them, fold pages, or lend them on.
2. The librarian checks each book when it comes back.
3. A book that is lost, defaced, destroyed, or not returned within six weeks is replaced with a new copy of the same book. If a new copy cannot be bought, you pay its printed price instead. The reading fees for the time you had it are paid as well. That is how a small library survives.
4. Once you have made a lost book good, the old copy is yours if it turns up.
5. There are no fines on top of the reading fees.

7. Reserving a book

You can ask for a book from your member page. A request is not a promise: the librarian confirms it and keeps the book for you when it is free. Anyone else is welcome to ask us whether we have a book.

8. Your member page and messages

1. Every member has a private page showing their books, receipts, and reading record. The link is yours to look after. If it gets out, ask us for a new one and the old one stops working.
2. Receipts come on WhatsApp. Emails from the library can be turned off from your page or from any email.
3. What we hold about you, and why, is set out on the privacy page.

9. Standing and ending a membership

1. Returning books on time and in good condition keeps your standing high. Late, damaged, or lost books bring it down. Your member page shows it as a meter.
2. A member whose standing runs low is told so, first as a warning and then as a final warning.
3. The librarian may end the membership of someone who keeps breaking these rules. That is always a person's decision, never the system's.
4. Membership fees already paid are not returned when a membership ends.

10. Changes to these rules

The rules will change as the library does. The rules in force are always the ones on this page, and the date at the foot of it shows when they last changed. If these rules and the librarian ever disagree, ask: the librarian can always explain, and can always waive a charge. The library's decision is final.

These rules replace the printed library rules that were in use before this website.

Published 1 October 2026, updated 14 October 2026. Questions: pageslendinglibrary@gmail.com or WhatsApp +91-90803-25985.