As of July 15th, the Brooklyn Public Library has discontinued applications for its fee-based out-of-state library card. BPL offered a card for $50 per year. According to the library’s website:
As of July 15, 2022, Brooklyn Public Library is no longer offering its fee-based out-of-state library card. Our priority remains serving Brooklynites and assuring that they can access the materials they need in a timely manner. BPL Library cards remain free for anyone who lives, works, pays property taxes or attends school in New York State. Existing out-of-state accounts will remain active until their expiration date and will not be renewable.
Brooklyn is the second large library to curtail out-of-state access. The Free Library of Philadelphia stopped offering fee cards in November of 2019. Brooklyn’s reasons mirror Philadelphia’s: Focusing on serving their direct service area and assuring that local patrons have priority access. The concern about serving local residents does make sense. Wait times for books have gotten much, much longer, especial for popular material and new releases. Publishers’ prices and terms for ebooks and audiobooks have gotten both more restrictive and more expensive and factor into this issue. Remember that libraries are funded by local tax dollars, so priority access for local patrons is important to library funding.
Existing BPL card cardholders can still borrow materials, but when those cards expire, they will not be renewed.
Unlike the Free Library of Philadelphia, the Brooklyn Public Library did not notify its fee card patrons via email of the change. I have a card at BPL and only found out via an online forum. Most out-of-state patrons were very upset, as many patrons who use an out-of-area library card live in communities that have very small ebook collections (compared to BPL, which offers over 194,000 digital books in their collection). Lack of choice in library materials is a huge problem that hits rural areas especially hard and highlights the need for a National Digital Library to service areas which do not have a robust library system.
You can check this article on Mobileread for a list of free and fee-card based libraries. (Please be sure to check each library’s website for the latest information on getting a card.)
To understand the issues involved with licensing library ebooks, please check out the American Library Association’s eBooksForAll site for more information.
The eBook Evangelist 
Oh boy. I’m gutted to hear this. I’ve had a BPL card for a few years and I use it heavily since I cancelled Audible to save money. My local library has a small and terrible selection. I’m going to need to plow through my wish list before my card expires. I have Scrib’d, but they throttle you after 3 or 4 books…
Yeah, me too. They had a really good selection of the types of books I liked to read. I fear we may see more of this coming down the road.
I haven’t had any problems with Scribd throttling me for a long time, but their collection is more audiobooks and less ebooks now, so that is frustrating. I would be interested in hearing more about your experience. 🙂
I should’ve known this was too good to last. I’ve had this ecard for three years and the selection is so much better than my local library. I didn’t even know they were ending it until I just tried to renew.
Mine expired in March. I replaced it with the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and the Houston Public Library. Both have a pretty good selection.
Thanks for the tip! I will check out those libraries.
The Stark Library in Ohio is a very good replacement for Brooklyn. I’ve been very pleased with their selection.
I was a long-time subscriber of Scribd but I canceled when they started emphasizing audiobooks more than ebooks and I realized I wasn’t getting my money’s worth.
I was upset about the Scribd shift to audiobooks as well. I liked Scribd for the few new release ebooks that I did not want to wait to read from the library. They are now a better source for newer audiobooks if that is your preferred medium.
I will check out the Stark Library. Thanks for the tip!