If you’re looking to save money or just need a convenient place to fax, your local library might be the perfect answer. Dive in to discover more about how libraries can meet your modern needs with old-school flair. We’ll break down the costs, the factors that impact them, and compare them with other fax solutions in the sections to come.
Library Fax Services: The Basics
When we think of libraries, we usually imagine a grand old hall, full of people quietly studying, and glaring disapprovingly at anybody who so much as coughs. Or perhaps we think of scrappy old books full of library stamps, which a few of us may be guilty of still having on the shelf at home, having forgotten to give them back 10 years ago.
Whatever the case, many of us actually have an outdated view of what most libraries look like today. Sure, they’re still full of books, but libraries have evolved to help their communities in other ways too. One of the ways libraries are helping their customers is by providing convenient access to technology some folks may not have at home – such as internet, computers, scanning and fax machines.
What Digital Services Do Libraries Offer?
Libraries have, for the most part, seen tough budget cuts in the past few decades. But they’ve still evolved to offer more services to their local communities. This includes book lending, but beyond that – digital resources, access to the internet, events, social outreach programs, and culturally preserving important local materials – such as old town maps and newspapers.
A key reason people still use libraries today is the technology and office equipment a library can provide. Many households used to have scanners, printers and fax machines – in the mid-1990s, around 25% of US households had a fax machine, compared to less than 1% today. Most libraries however still offer scanning, printing and faxing services, allowing you to send faxes, and sometimes even receive faxes, through your local library.
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
Of the 6 libraries which charged for faxing:
- The average cost of sending a 5-page national fax was $5.21.
- The average cost of sending a 5-page international fax was $13.00.
We’ve put the exact prices in a table so that you can see how wide-ranging the results can be.
Sending a National Fax
| Library | First Page | Extra Page | 5 Pages Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Library 1 | $2.00 | $0.50 | $4.00 |
| Library 2 | $1.75 | $0.75 | $5.75 |
| Library 3 | $3.00 | $0.50 | $5.00 |
| Library 4 | $1.50 | $1.50 | $7.50 |
| Library 5 | $1.00 | $1.00 | $5.00 |
| Library 6 | $2.00 | $0.50 | $4.00 |
| Average: | $1.88 | $0.83 | $5.21 |
Sending an International Fax
| Library | First Page | Extra Page | 5 Pages Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Library 1 | $5.00 | $1.00 | $9.00 |
| Library 2 | $3.95 | $3.45 | $17.75 |
| Library 3 | $5.00 | $2.00 | $13.00 |
| Library 4 | $4.75 | $1.50 | $10.75 |
| Library 5 | $3.00 | $3.00 | $15.00 |
| Library 6 | $4.50 | $1.00 | $8.50 |
| Average: | $4.37 | $2.16 | $13.00 |
Before we jump for joy at the idea of 35% of libraries offering free faxing – it’s worth highlighting that multiple libraries we checked offering free faxing also took care to mention that there is a limit to how ‘free’ it is – they ask that you do not send large faxes, or multiple faxes using their fax machine. So whilst they may be offering ‘free’ faxing, we can assume that all libraries would have a problem if you turned up with 100 pages to fax! Therefore, if you’d like to send larger faxes, it would be better to either go to a paid faxing service, or to use an online fax service, or mobile app. Municorn’s Fax App, for example, gives you flexible subscription options for unlimited faxing.
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
