General news

The Lake Bluff Public Library is saddened to announce the loss of a beloved longtime staff member, colleague, and friend. Donna M. Williams passed away on December 31, 2020 following a brief illness.

Donna joined the staff in 1991 and spent 28 years working with the children of Lake Bluff. She was a tremendous advocate for children and she had an incredible knack for finding the perfect book for the right reader at the right time. As a colleague, she was an invaluable friend and mentor. More than one of our current staff members chose to pursue a career in libraries because of Donna.

And of course, we would be remiss if we did not acknowledge her as perhaps the greatest cat enthusiast on staff.

Curbside Pickup hours are changing! To accommodate increased demand for earlier hours, Curbside Pickup appointment hours are changing to the following schedule:

Monday - Wednesday: 1pm-6pm

Thursday - Friday: 2pm-6pm

Saturday: 1pm-5pm

Head on over to our Curbside Pickup page for more information on how to schedule your Curbside Pickup.

We are pleased to announce a new addition to our Curbside Pickup service: contactless printing, copying, scanning, and faxing. Our Document Services page has information and instructions on how to use this new service, available beginning December 21.

Winter Reading Club for adults, teens, and children has begun! This year, our theme is Books Like Us, which is all about celebrating the transformative power of seeing yourself and others reflected in a story. Visit our Winter Reading Club page for everything you need to know about Winter Reading Club, including signup, paper logs, and some great reading lists and other resources. We will have a monthly prize drawing for all ages for prizes purchased from local businesses.

Thanks to a generous donation from the Friends of the Lake Bluff Library, we are now able to offer you access to Tutor.com! Tutor.com provides on-demand tutoring, homework help, test preparation and writing assistance for students in grades K-Adult in over 60 subjects. Live online help is available from 2:00pm and 9:00pm, 7 days a week. No appointment required.

Starting October 13, the pickup point for Curbside Pickup will be inside the Library lobby. Items will be placed on a cart next to the interior Library doors. The building will NOT be open at this time. In order to maintain social distancing, we are asking patrons leave the Library building once they have picked up their Curbside orders.

Apart from this change, all other Curbside Pickup procedures remain in effect. Visit our Curbside Pickup page for more information about this service.

We are pleased to announce that the exterior book drops have officially reopened for returns. We have a drive-up book drop on Oak Avenue and a walkup return bin right by the Library's main entrance. Return bins will be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Thanks to everyone for their patience and cooperation as we worked back up to reopening the book drops!

Right now, we are accepting returns on a limited basis due to the high volume of materials that are currently checked out. Here is what you need to know:

This isn’t exactly the way we envisioned making this announcement when our Board approved this exciting policy change a few months ago, but effective June 15, the Lake Bluff Public Library will be implementing autorenewal. This means that going forward, the system will automatically renew any eligible items before they become overdue. If an item can’t be renewed—if there’s a hold, if you’ve renewed it 3 times already, or if it’s a special loan like a Trending Title or ILL—the system will send you an alert. We hope that this change will make using the Library even easier and more convenient for you! 

This website redesign has been in progress for many years and we are so excited to finally show it to you. Some of the highlights of our new site include: