How To Fax At The Library

Key Takeaways

• Local libraries often offer faxing services to their community

• Libraries can sometimes offer limited free faxing, but also often charge extra to send faxes – this is usually at a lower price than other faxing services

• Libraries often provide a fax number for their faxing services, which can be useful for sending and receiving documents.

• Whilst being cheap and convenient, faxing at the library also has disadvantages. If you want greater security, flexibility and convenience, it may be better to use an online faxing service.

Library Fax Services: The Basics

What Digital Services Do Libraries Offer?

How Much Does It Cost To Fax At The Library?

Libraries are known for providing free or low-cost facilities, often funded by local government budgets to serve their communities for as little money as possible. Since getting a library card and checking out a book is often free, many people believe using the library’s fax machines will also be free. But is this true?

Well, this is a hard question to answer. Unlike many fax apps and online faxing services, which have one price for their customers no matter where they are in the world, the cost of faxing will depend entirely on your location. They can be very different, so we’ve done some research to help you understand the typical cost of using a fax machine at the library.

Libraries can have very different prices – some are free, and some are pretty expensive. We looked at 20 libraries to get some average price information using libraries.org, which has a complete online repository of every public library in the United States. We chose 20 libraries at random from around the state of New York. You can use this website to find your own local public library, and follow the link to their website to find information on any fax machine services they offer.

Here’s a full run-down of the results from our search – which will give you an idea as to how much it might cost you to start faxing at your local library.

Of the 20 libraries we checked:

• 7 did not offer a fax service.

• 7 offered a free fax service.

• 6 offered a fax service at a cost.

Overall, this is a mixed bag – with 35% of libraries not offering a faxing service, 35% offering faxing for free, and 30% offering a paid fax service.

First, let’s talk about the libraries that charge money to send a fax. These libraries have a similar pricing model to places like Staples and the UPS store – it costs a set price to send the first page, and then a usually smaller price for each extra page you send. This can make sending a big document much more expensive, but this is pretty normal for how all fax machine services work – whereas online faxing often lets you pay a subscription for unlimited faxing.

We collected the price for each first page and each extra page, for both national and international faxes. We then chose to calculate the price of a 5-page fax – this is a normal sized fax to send for activities such as filing your taxes, or sending information to your healthcare provider.

Average Cost To Fax At The Library

Other Offline Options For Faxing

There are other stores and services which offer the convenience of a fax machine in your local area. For example, the UPS, FedEx Office, and Staples all have many locations offering a faxing service. We’ve researched their prices, and we can compare the cost of the library average we found against the cost of a typical 5-page national and international fax from those stores, from cheapest to most expensive:

1. The libraries we examined were the cheapest, with a national 5-page fax average price of $5.21, and an international 5-page fax average price of $13.
2. The UPS store prices we found were the next cheapest, with a national 5-page fax average price of $10, and an international 5-page fax average price of $15.
3. The FedEx Office prices we found were the next cheapest, with a national 5-page fax average price of $10.50, and an international 5-page fax average price of $25.
4. The Staples prices we found were in last place, with a national 5-page fax average price of $12, and an international 5-page fax average price of $20.

From what we’ve found, libraries are usually cheaper than other commercial alternatives, and are often free to use (for a limited number of pages). However, it is worth mentioning that stores such as UPS, FedEx and Staples may have more modern and capable fax machines than your local library, and their employees may have more specialised knowledge of the machines to help you if you get stuck.

The Pros And Cons Of Using Library Fax Services

Overall, libraries are a good place to send faxes, and many of them will be able to offer faxing facilities to their community, either for free or at a small price. There are some other reasons why you may or may not want to consider using the library for your faxing:

Pros

• Libraries may be closer to home than stores which offer faxing services, especially for folks who live in small towns or in the country.
• Your library is a local community hub, and you can meet local people there whilst you fax, and support other local initiatives. Local governments might be tempted to shut down libraries if they aren’t being used enough.

Cons

• The technology in libraries may be outdated, and the fax machines may not have all the capabilities of newer machines, or of online faxing, which lets you take advantage of all the processing power in your smartphone to send faxes very conveniently.
• Free faxing offered by libraries is limited to a small number of pages.
• Security may not be tight on public library fax machines – if you are sending legal documents, or confidential information, you may want to consider a more secure alternative!
• You are limited to the opening hours of libraries – and some of them are not open every day.

Good Alternatives To Library Fax Services

If you are looking for a convenient, easy and low-price alternative to the library, online faxing is by far the most popular way to fax today. Mobile fax apps can use all the power inside your smartphone to provide modern and high-tech ways to send a fax at any time from any location, and they are HIPAA-compliant and highly secure.