What are librarians afraid of?

Well, getting their libraries shut down, for one thing. The Boston Globe reports on a slew of public libraries closing their doors thanks to massive budget cuts. I wrote in a recent post that I was worried about libraries making decisions that were based in fear. This story is a good reminder for those of us who live in cities with well-funded libraries of a very real basis for some of that fear.

The Globe article states:

Towns are often forced to choose between providing free access to books or hiring a couple more firefighters or police officers. Saugus town manager Andrew Bisignani said public safety has to come first. In the cold, mathematical world of budgets, public libraries have a label they cannot shake. They are a “non essential service.”

“People are looking at the cost, the price, because with diminished budgets, every dollar counts,” said Mary Rose Quinn , the library director in Saugus. “But what’s forgotten is that the value that we offer far exceeds anything that anybody pays.”

This is true. And, in fact, it’s even true if the “value” is calculated in strictly economic terms. A recent report by the Urban Libraries Council explains some of the many ways that libraries benefit the economic development of their communities. This report suggests that libraries actually provide an excellent return on the monetary investment required to sustain them. The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, for example, generates $91 million in economic output, and the Seattle Public Library contributed $16 million to the local economy during its first full year of operation. The report highlights three areas in particular in which libraries make economic contributions to their communities: early literacy, workforce initiatives, and small business support.

The problem that libraries like the Saugus Public Library have is that their community doesn’t feel they are important enough to spend a lot of money on. But even “non-essential” services can be worth paying for if they provide value to the community. Of course, libraries provide many more kinds of value to their communities than just economic, but economic value is one that is easy to quantify and measure. The Saugus library has tried, so far unsuccessfully, to present their economic value to their community: the SPL website prominently features a calculator allowing users to see the monetary value of individual library services.

The story of Saugus Public Library and the others closing in Massachusetts is a sad reminder of how important (and difficult) it is for libraries to make clear to their communities the value of the services they provide.