Thank you for your interest in Montgomery County Public Libraries. Your comments and suggestions are important to us because they tell us something about what our community is thinking, reading, and learning.

• Montgomery County is a diverse community with learners of all ages and many different backgrounds and interests.
• Our budget is finite, and we often must be far more selective than we might like. We estimate that we are able to purchase, catalog and find space for an average of one out of every five to ten titles that are published or produced each year. This means that many good titles are not purchased for MCPL, including titles in which some of our customers may have a special interest.
• If a book or other item has a publication or production date older than 2 years, it will not generally be considered for purchase.
• We do borrow and lend a large number of books and other items through loan arrangements with other Maryland libraries as well as with libraries throughout the country. Ask at your local library about how you might borrow a particular item or visit our Interlibrary Loan webpage for information.
• Work by local authors must meet our selection standards for quality, demand, and appropriateness for general library collections. If you are a local author, you may submit your work for consideration.  We will determine its placement in our general collections or in our local authors’ collection. The local authors’ collections are not cataloged but are available for browsing.

We welcome your suggestions for books and other materials to be added to the Montgomery County Public Libraries' collection. Please check the catalog to see if MCPL already owns the item before you submit a title suggestion.

Because of the many requests that we receive we cannot respond individually to each suggestion.  If MCPL purchases the item you recommend, it will appear in the catalog after its publication date or within several weeks after your suggestion.

Due to the volume of purchase suggestions, we will not place reserves for you on high demand items such as new entertainment DVDs and titles by bestselling authors. You may place reserves on these items on-line, by telephone or in person once the title appears in our catalog.

If you do not find the item in our catalog 3 months after its publication date, we recommend that you request it through Interlibrary Loan, a service that allows our customers to borrow materials from other libraries.

To suggest a title or subject area for purchase, please complete the form below: