When I was in elementary school, you could go to the library and check out one book for one week. Those were the rules.

I haven’t spent much time in public libraries, but I assumed the rules wouldn’t be all that different. I remember being able to keep things longer, but never really thought about how many items you could take at a time.

In this morning’s Washington Post, there is a story about a ring of suspected book thieves accused of checking out items and selling them for profit. The story says 12 people have been indicted on charges totaling $90,000 worth of books.

That’s a lot of library books. But the real question in this story is just how many items public libraries entrust to their patrons. The Prince Georges County Public Library, at the center of the Post story, allows an individual to check out 75 items at a time. I read a ton and it would take me three years to read that many books.

Naturally I was curious how that stacks up to other libraries in the Washington area, and that’s one place where the story fell short. Good thing the Internet is there to fill in the gaps for me.

In neighboring Montgomery County, the limit is 50. The county on the other side, Anne Arundel, allows patrons to check out a staggering 99 items at a time. That’s pretty ridiculous. For an extra layer of comparison I looked at Duval County, FL, which has a limit of 50.

I could understand if maybe you were working on your doctoral dissertation. I recall one of my professors at Susquehanna University having an enormous stack of books on his desk during the late days of his PhD-seeking. But outside of an academic setting, how can that number make sense?

There are only so many books to go around, and even at a large library system it doesn’t make great sense to potentially lose track of that many items at a time. Maybe more people will take advantage of the system and use their free library cards to line their pockets.

Or perhaps the libraries can just make their lending policies a little more in line with reality.