LOS ANGELES – For Kaitlyn Quesada, the public library has become almost a second home.

"I used to go every Tuesday throughout all my high school years," she said.

Those days, she would regularly volunteer at her local library in Pacoima. In the fall, she’ll be attending UCLA and says the Student Success Library Card helped her achieve that goal.

"Some kids that are more privileged are able to...afford tutors or afford expensive books, but these are resources that were free to me," Quesada said.

She says she used her student success card to check out SAT and ACT prep books without having to worry about fines, fees, or renewing them every few weeks.

"So, I was able to keep studying over and over again to just improve my scores and you know, get better scores to make me a more competitive applicant," she said.

"I always tell the kids, this is the card you’re getting, but sorry it’s not this big," joked Cathie Chenoweth, showing an oversized version of the card.

Chenoweth is in charge of the program. She and other administrators were looking for ways to bring more people into the library.

"We noticed that one of the things keeping them from coming in were things like the fines and fees," Chenoweth said.

Almost three years after its launch, the student success library cards are now in the hands of more than 655,000 LAUSD students from kindergarten through 12th grade. 

"We’ve seen a number of schools and classes and families that we’ve never seen before," Chenoweth said.

And the program is growing...

"We’re bringing in charters. We’re bringing in privates, parochial. We’re really trying to break down those walls and make sure that everybody has access," Chenoweth said.

Students can check out up to three books at a time and keep the card until they’re 21. They can also access free online resources.

"It’s free, live one-on-one tutoring in any subject matter or if they’re writing an essay, SAT prep, ACT prep," Chenoweth said.

If students lose or damage a book, they get a strike. Like baseball, three strikes and they can’t checkout any more books for the rest of the school year. 

Library leaders say it’s not as big a problem as they anticipated. 

The books are coming back and in many cases, families have insisted on replacing the materials that were lost or damaged, even though they’re not required to do so.

Quesada graduated from San Fernando High School with a 4.2 GPA and plans to study bioengineering at UCLA. Until then, you’ll likely know where to find her.

"There’s a book about basically anything at the library, and you can get to know more about anything that you want."