Recently, I’ve made a discovery that’s worth talking about, “Using the Library As A Mobile Office”

To have an office and all the expenses that are associated with having such an office may be able to obtained at your local library for free!

At this very moment, I’m in a small 12 x 12 room (with five chairs and a table, not like the larger meeting room in the picture below) in my library, writing this article while enjoying the view through a 6 x 10 window.  I find myself imagining what it would be like to come here everyday to do my blogging, online website, and rental investment property work.  Why pay for a full-time office, when you “the taxpayer” (including me too, of course) are paying for the room and nobody is using it?  If you are a starting out entrepreneur, perhaps this is an option worth exploring!

Let me describe the benefits of using the library as a mobile office!

1. There are meeting rooms that site empty 90% of the time during the “business hours” time slots per day.  I’m sitting in one right now, and I have to say, it has the same feel as my regular employer’s office that is provided to me.
2. There are regular options here that a normal work office would have like: air conditioning, heating (in the winter of course), restroom facilities (which are even nicer than my employer’s), water fountain, wireless internet access, fax machine availability (although I wouldn’t use it), copy machines, and even a phone in the room that I’m in (again, I wouldn’t use it because I have other alternatives), and many other perks too.
3. Silence, in this office room, it’s even more quiet than my office at work, but if I wanted some human background sounds, I could just shift to the general area instead.
4. Access to free electricity.  Currently, this library office has an electric outlet, so I’m charging my cell phone and I have my laptop plugged in too.
5. Mobility!  In my state, practically all of the surrounding libraries have free internet access and meeting rooms such as the one that I’m currently in.  I could call ahead and schedule a meeting room at a different library each and every day if I wanted a change in scenery, whereas with my employer’s office, I’m stuck with the same grey short walls (cubicle walls) throughout the entire building.  In some ways working in my office employer’s site reminds me of the movie “The Shawshank Redemption”.  Shoot we even have restrictions on how many plants we’re allowed in the office (2 small ones).

Now some of you might say “What about phone services”?  Well, google handles that for me!  With Google Voice, I have a number that I use for all of my calls, and the beauty of this number is that it can be setup to forward the call to four devices at once.  And once one of the devices take the call, the others stop ringing!  The kicker is that Google Voice is currently free (although this will probably change in the future at some point).

Of course, I won’t stay her the entire day.  I have a lot of the same options at home, but using the Library as a Mobile Office is an option to break the monotony of strictly working at home in an extra bedroom.

Have you considered using the library system as a mobile office?  I see a lot of advantages in doing so.  Plus if you travel to different states, why not use the facilities at the location that you are at?  Assuming many libraries are the same, this seems to be a perfect option to me.

Bests,

MR