Trying to donate poetry magazine subscriptions to my local library

I recently decided to subscribe to a few poetry journals. However, I recalled that I am bad about not reading them in a timely manner. They can begin to pile up and become a "burden." Yet I still wanted access to them. I decided the answer was to donate subscriptions to some of them to my local library.

This suggestion was novel to the library staff when I called and I was referred to the director of the library. I found it encouraging that he was willing to entertain the idea but I quickly learned how limited libraries can be in their selection of what they put on their shelves. 

I live in a small/medium-sized town. Due to dedication and fundraising, it has a rather glorious library with lots of space. However, its budget is limited. That limited budget seems to limit the sort of book options they have. They apparently belong to lists and if a periodical isn't on a list, adding it to their catalog is problematic. And since these periodical lists are based on a monthly subscription model, the literary journal models of annual, bi-annual, and quarterly publication are just too weird.

In addition, the literary journals I looked at charged more for an institutional subscription. If that institution were a university, I could understand. But charging more to a library? 

Again, I was lucky to work with a library director who was willing to give this a try and to entertain some work-arounds. In the end, I subscribed to the journals (Poetry Magazine, Rattle, and the Southern Poetry Review) as an individual but used the library as my address. The people who do their intake of periodicals where informed of this unconventional situation and of how often the publications would be expected to come in. Of course, I left them with my phone number in the event they had any other questions.

I was surprised by how much finagling this required and also by how limited libraries could be by certain conventions within their industry. It's yet another window into why poetry journals (and lit mags in general) are so rarely seen on the shelves of libraries and bookstores.