Taichung city councilors are pushing the city to fix long library hold queues, bad news for readers but likely to bring faster book turnover.

• Popular titles at Taichung's public libraries can take more than three years to reach a reader who reserves one.
• One recent bestseller has 53 copies in the system and nearly 1,800 people waiting; a reader who signed up last October has only moved to 664th in line.
• Holds expire after two years, so some people lose their spot and have to start the queue over.
• Taichung owns fewer books per resident than the national average and ranks near the bottom among Taiwan's six big cities.
• The city says its book budget doubled to NT$100 million a year and inter-branch deliveries now run four times a week instead of two.

Outlook: The city will cut the loan period on high-demand titles to 14 days, which should shorten waits but not erase them.