Library Review

What is the true value of a public library?

David McMenemy
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EDITORIAL Editorial

What is the true value of

a public library?
David McMenemy 273
Department of Computer and Information Sciences,
University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Abstract
Purpose – To examine the different discourses put forward on how the value of a public library can
be measured and question their efficacy.
Design/methodology/approach – Discusses some of the methodologies used to evaluate public
libraries and offers a viewpoint on the desirability of valuing public libraries from an economic
standpoint.
Findings – The paper argues that focussing on the economic value of an institution like the public
library runs the risk of demeaning its social and intellectual foundations. Additionally that obsession
with issue statistics leads to an incorrect focus for libraries about their potential impact on their
community.
Library Review 2007.56:273-277.

Practical implications – The paper should be of interest to anyone researching the topic of public
libraries and how they are perceived, as it offers a viewpoint on how libraries should be valued by
society.
Originality/value – The paper offers an alternative viewpoint regarding the effectiveness of some
of the mainstream evaluation methods used to justify the value of public libraries.
Keywords Value added, Public libraries
Paper type Viewpoint

It seems that, in the UK at least, the public library is a service that constantly has to
defend its right to exist. As Goulding has suggested, although public feeling towards
libraries seems to remain positive, commentators, both political and social, like nothing
more than to paint the picture of a service ‘‘at crisis point’’ (Goulding, 2006, p. 4).
Yet from the outside looking in, so much of the navel-gazing instigated by such
reports that cry the death knell of the public library, seem built on shaky foundations,
and, it seems to me, a complete misunderstanding of what the public library concept is
and how we should value it. More worryingly, the agendas created by such navel-
gazing run the risk of weakening the service even further by encouraging a focus on
issue statistics or other numbers-driven methodologies as the absolute guarantor of the
potential value of a public library to its community and to society. So how should we
measure the value of a public library? What indeed do we mean by value?

Evaluating the impact of public libraries

Issue or perish?
For anyone working in public libraries in the UK, book issues statistics will be
something they are more than aware of. When in practice I recall the blind panic that
would ensue for many community librarians when they realised their issue figures had
dropped on the previous quarter. They felt personal failures for not making the figure Library Review
Vol. 56 No. 4, 2007
larger than had been seen previously. More worryingly they were occasionally pp. 273-277
perceived as such and transferred from their responsibility, like some under- # Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0024-2535
performing sportsperson who had seen better days. DOI 10.1108/00242530710743471
 LR As one of the key performance indicators used to measure how well a library
56,4 authority is doing, issue statistics offer the model of a league table of public libraries,
with services competing to be in the top ten. Yet what exactly does this chart mean?
How can book issues in an inner city community tells us anything of what those books
are being used for when borrowed? Certainly an element of popularity of the service
can be gleaned from statistics that show number of registered library users in a
community and from this statistic the number of active users. However these cold, hard
274 facts tell us nothing of what the library is achieving for these people. As Toyne and
Usherwood (2001) have observed:
evaluation is still restricted to counting the number of book issues, and there is little evidence
of attempts to consider the impact of those ‘‘issues’’ on individuals or groups in the
community. In other words, the service still tends to measure what is measurable and
consequently miss what is important (Toyne and Usherwood, 2001, p. 149).
In the class I teach on performance measurement of libraries, it can sometimes be
difficult to justify to the enquiring young minds who will be the librarians of tomorrow
just why so much energy has to be expended by librarians on quantitative
performance measures. In showing the students the annual public library performance
indicators year on year, I am encouraged to see more and more of them question the
Library Review 2007.56:273-277.

wisdom and efficacy of measuring libraries in this way. Perhaps the future generations
of librarians will bring sense to the table and develop more qualitative methods of
measuring library impact that can be applied efficiently and economically, and that tell
us exactly how big an impact libraries are having on their communities. We need to see
more methodologies like that used by Linley and Usherwood in their social audit of
Newcastle and Somerset library services (Linley and Usherwood, 1998). Identification
of clear areas of community enrichment and benefit that tell us exactly how important
the library can be to the community it seeks to serve seems to me to be the way forward
for a truly holistic understanding of the real value of public libraries.

Contingent valuation
Recently the concept of contingent valuation (CV) has come into vogue. This
methodological approach to evaluating the potential impact of libraries began as a
favourite of the environmental lobby who used it as a way of measuring non-use values
for environmental projects; in other words justification of the value of something by
considering not only use of it, but its non-use. This is then extrapolated to argue that a
piece of land may actually be worth more to the economy than it costs to maintain. It is
clear to see why this methodology also appeals in the cultural sector, since libraries
and museums are essentially public buildings that anyone can use, but not everyone
does. CV methodologies seek to ask non-users of such services how much they
think that service is worth, therefore while nationally library membership may be at
30 per cent, if 60 per cent of the population claim that they would pay £10 a month for
the privilege of a library card and it only costs £5 a head to operate the service, then it
can be argued that for every £1 invested, the public library is worth £2.
Studies of libraries using CV have taken place in the USA, Norway and the UK in
recent years (Aabo and Audunson, 2002; Barron et al., 2005; Bolton Metropolitan
Borough Council and MLA North West, 2006; Griffiths et al., 2004; St Louis Public
Libraries, 1999). Having used this methodology on a project I was involved in recently
with colleagues, it seemed to us to be an incredibly flawed system of valuing an
abstract concept, such as the worth of a public library. As stated, part of the
 methodology involves asking a person outright what they think something is worth, Editorial
e.g. how much is a library card worth for a month. The majority of people questioned
by us chose a meaningful number, so rather than say £3.76, they would offer £5, or
£10, and many others simply balked at the ludicrousness of the question being asked.
This seemed to mirror other studies that questioned the efficacy of such an unscientific
approach (Whynes et al., 2005). Such methodologies seem to be politically rather than
scientifically or even socially worthy and while they may speak the language of the
politician, the reality of the figures seems questionable. I for one am sad to see this
275
methodology growing in popularity, as it seems to go against everything that libraries
seem to exist to do, and reduces a service that aims to provide a social and educational
benefit into pounds, shillings and pence. For me it changes the discourse of why we
should fund public libraries from one of societal benefit, to one of economic benefit.
While both can and do go hand in hand in many cases, it cheapens the concept by
emphasising economic value over the many others public libraries have.

Values over value?

It could be interpreted that I am arguing for a world where public libraries do not
have to justify their existence. Perhaps I am, but realistically it is important to measure
just how public libraries are impacting their communities. This is, however, not
Library Review 2007.56:273-277.

successfully achieved by quantitative measures. Public libraries are not bookshops,

focussed on filling the shelves and seeing them emptied by eager readers. Our concern
should not only be that readers borrow the books, but that their experience of
borrowing the book has a positive influence on them and society. Equally, the user who
merely frequents the library to look up a fact, read a newspaper, consult a local
timetable, attend a class in some topic or other, their use of the library is as valid to
them and the public library service as the rabid borrower who withdraws half a dozen
books a week. I fear that we sometimes fail to see that.
The continuing emphasis on raising the levels of book issues leads to a culture
where libraries become identikits of each other, with shelves full of populist material,
with little room for diversity, and more importantly the non-fiction and reference
areas being squeezed to accommodate more paperback novels. I have yet to hear a
convincing argument posited by those who favour this approach that this is the public
library serving its community in a meaningful way; indeed I very much doubt that
there is a professional argument that would be so. Public libraries need to represent the
totality of human experience as much as is practicable; it seems to me that you do not
do this by focussing on the most populist material at the expense of breadth. This is a
policy driven by issue statistics.
I recall when in practice the disappointment in hearing that cuts were to be made to
the service I worked for which would result in a public library having to close. It
seemed to me that something was not quite right, that an economic decision was
trumping the social and educational needs of the community. Invariably decisions
made on which library to close came down to either how busy that library was, or how
much the infrastructure of the library would cost to upkeep over the periods of time to
come. There are many potential reasons why under-achieving communities may not
use their local library, related to literacy, achievement, services and stock. Indeed an
argument could be posited that the last libraries to close should be those serving
disadvantaged communities, and I always hoped that a management decision would be
made that threatened to close the busiest of our libraries instead, a library serving an
affluent middle-class area in the city I worked. The furore over such a high-profile
 LR closure would, in my opinion, have raised such a controversy that there would have
56,4 been a good chance that no libraries would be forced to close as a consequence. For me
the impact of a library closure on a disadvantaged community had the potential to be
far greater than that on an affluent one, albeit it being able to be done more quietly.
As Archibald MacLeish famously posited, ‘‘What is more important in a library
than anything else – than everything else – is the fact that it exists’’ (MacLeish, 1972).
276 In many ways I agree with MacLeish and believe this holds true even if the library is
under-used. The fact that the library exists, the fact that is it is part of the community it
serves, known to them even if they seek to only sparingly use it, seems to me to be
something that merits respect. Politicians and outside observers need to remember this
if they choose to criticise and chip away at the public library ethos by suggesting
under-use is necessarily someone’s fault and something that must be fixed. Should
every public library and librarian seek to work to maximum capacity? Just what level
of use is acceptable?
It is oft said that in the Western World we take too much for granted. Technology
has made our lives easier; we have good health and social welfare systems; education is
generally available to all; and we have had the luxury of public libraries free to all for
150 years. The current debate in the UK regarding the future of public libraries is one
Library Review 2007.56:273-277.

that must be won in favour of their retention and strengthening. To lose or weaken one
of the most vital components of our democracy will be something that will have
immense consequences for the future enlightenment of our citizens. The value of an
informed society that knows its past and is prepared for its future cannot be measured
in pounds, shillings and pence. It cannot be measured in knowing that book issues
have gone up this week over the previous week. Unless we all wake up tomorrow in a
Utopian society where every citizen has access to all human knowledge at their
fingertips, the public library is as valid as it ever was. It just needs to stop chasing
numbers and attempting to justify itself through meaningless formulas that both
potentially devalue it, and that can be used as weapons against its very existence.

References
Aabo, S. and Audunson, R. (2002), ‘‘Rational choice and valuation of public libraries: can
economic models for evaluating non-market goods be applied to public libraries?’’, Journal
of Library and Information Science, Vol. 34 No. 1, pp. 5-16.
Barron, D.D. et al. (2005), The Economic Impact of Public Libraries in South Carolina, University
of South Carolina, School of Library and Information Science, available at:
www.libsci.sc.edu/SCEIS/impact_brochure.pdf (accessed 15 January 2007).
Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council and MLA North West (2005), Bolton’s Museum, Library
and Archive Services: An Economic Evaluation, Metropolitan Borough Council, Bolton.
Goulding, A. (2006), Public Libraries in the 21st Century: Defining Services and Debating the
Future, Gower, Aldershot.
Griffiths, J.M. et al. (2004), Taxpayer Return on Investment in Florida Public Libraries: Summary
Report, available at: http://dlis.dos.state.fl.us/bld/roi/pdfs/ROISummaryReport.pdf
(accessed 15 January 2007).
Linley, R. and Usherwood, B. (1998), New Measures for the New Library: A Social Audit of Public
Libraries, British Library Research and Innovation Report 89, Department of Information
Studies, University of Sheffield, Sheffield.
MacLeish, A. (1972), ‘‘The premise of meaning’’, American Scholar, Vol. 41, Summer, pp. 357-62.
 St Louis Public Libraries (1999) Using Your Library: Public Library Benefits Valuation Study, Editorial
St. Louis Public Library, available at: www.slpl.lib.mo.us/using/valuationtoc.htm (accessed
15 January 2007).
Toyne, J. and Usherwood, B. (2001), Checking the Books: The Value and Impact of Public Library
Book Reading, Department of Information Studies, University of Sheffield, Sheffield.
Whynes, D.K., Philips, Z. and Frew, E. (2005), ‘‘Think of a number . . . any number?’’, Health
Economics, Vol. 14 No. 11, pp. 1191-5.
277
Corresponding author
David McMenemy can be contacted at: david.mcmenemy@cis.strath.ac.uk
Library Review 2007.56:273-277.

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