Polk County Joins the NC Cardinal Consortium!

NC Cardinal is a growing consortium of public libraries in 40 North Carolina counties dedicated to sharing resources and expanding opportunities through the use of a single online catalog. NC Cardinal expands items available to you from about 50,000 items in Polk County Public Libraries to over 6.4 million statewide!

• Discover materials not owned locally
• Borrow materials from any NC Cardinal Library using your Polk County library card
• Place holds online for items from any NC Cardinal library; materials are sent to your pickup library of choice – FREE.
• Return borrowed materials at any NC Cardinal Library

 New Features in Cardinal!

• Checkout lengths for almost everything will DOUBLE! (New items will stay the same.)
• Save your history of holds and checked out items by “opting in” through your account.
• Change your account password from home.
• Choose to be notified of arrived holds by text message.

What’s not changing…

• You can still request items, renew checkouts, and manage your account online, by phone, or in person
• Polk County cardholders will continue to have first dibs on books, movies, and other materials owned by Polk County Public Libraries.

 Libraries in Rutherford County

Libraries in Rutherford County are not joining NC Cardinal at this time. After January 1, cards from libraries in Rutherford County will not work in Polk County, and vice versa.

If you use our libraries with a card from a library in Rutherford County, we’ll issue you a FREE Polk County card.

You can use libraries in Rutherford County with a card from the Isothermal Community College library in Spindale (free for any Polk resident) or with a card from a Rutherford Public Library (free if you live, work, or attend school in Rutherford County.)

December – January: borrowing from libraries outside of Polk County will be limited as we move from one consortium to another

• Throughout the migration process, you’ll still have full access to borrow and request materials owned by Polk County.
• In January, existing requests for items not owned by Polk County will be paused until we’re in NC Cardinal.