41 public and acedemic libraries in Eastern Massachusetts, otherwise known as the Minuteman Library Network (MLN), are having a hard time keeping up with a 30% increase in patron requests via their online catalog. It is no fault of the library staff, but apparently patrons are getting edgy. Library Director Barbara Myles explains:

It is (by design) so easy to request items from other libraries in MLN that many of our 666,000 patrons use it to borrow many of those 1,246,000 titles. That's the good news. The bad news is, the delivery system is on the brink of heat stroke from the resulting volume of materials moving from Medfield to Winchester, Dover to Concord, with every single item going through Hyde Park for sorting. Read the full story in the Lincoln Journal