Arlington Heights Memorial Library — Attraction in Wheeling Township

Used to be one of the best libraries in the country. It was known for its collection, excellent reference service, special services, and the high quality of the professional librarians. A couple of years ago they dumped most of the collection especially the reference collection. They adopted a bookstore model of service with many copies of popular titles but no depth to the collection. I read a couple of popular titles a week and appreciat short waiting times for popular books. I no longer use the library for serious reading. Ironically Kindle is much better.

It is puzzling that a library would cede its strongest asset in the marketplace and adopt a model where all of the stores are going out of business.

The other huge asset, librarians, are gone also. Non-professional clerks can't answer questions and don't know the collection. NO HELP for CUSTOMERS.

It is a travesty that an educated community has such poor library services, especially when it used to be...

I have lived in Arlington Heights for seven years. Each year I’ve paid an estimated $1100 in Library tax. I rarely use the library and I have a library card. I went to the library to reserve a conference room and come to find out my library card was expired. How does a Library card expire? Especially when you are home owning property tax paying citizen of Arlington Heights? On another note I would appreciate it if the library would not staff three times as many people as necessary. The taxpayers money is not to be used to create jobs in Arlington Heights library. And please stop renovating the library with unnecessary renovations, including new automatic doors, new entryways, red brick roads, and I’m sure many other intemperate expenses. Please be respectful and responsible of the tax payers money and control...

Busy and packed on a weekday evening. The staff at the desk seemed immersed in something. When I couldn't find a seat at a preferred table, I kept walking and noticed a lot of people knocked out in chairs whilst reading, or on a laptop. What I also noticed was some people were just sitting there watching others the whole time. It was a bit off-putting and strange. I continued to get weird vibes while walking around and wondered if they had any Security on duty here.... It is a HUGE library but so few people appeared to work there. There was a space I wanted to sit at, but a young couple was socializing loudly close by which made it distracting and difficult to concentrate. I didn't see any Staff walking around let alone security to notice the couple. I got up and moved. ...