comment no. L
May. 4th, 2011 01:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacLocal budget crises hereabouts have generated a new idea: fees for public library cards for patrons who reside in some other public library's service area. (At the moment there are none, and I have cards for five of the seven public library systems in the county.) The logic is that libraries are supported by local taxes as well as state and federal funds, and people from outside the geographic tax base are getting a discounted ride.
Surprisingly, perhaps, I'm not necessarily opposed to such an idea. I wrote a detailed report on library fee policies when I was in library school many years ago. At that time the issue was mostly over special services like inter-library loan and computer access (no web then; public library computer services of the day were mostly mediated searches in expensive proprietary scientific databases), though non-resident fees were also discussed, albeit rarely implemented. Everybody allowed late fees, but there was strong distaste for any other fees, and one principal argument against them: that library services were important enough that they ought to be supported by the community at large, rather than dinging the individuals who happened to need them.
Now, I am not a libertarian, and I'm all in favor of services being supported by the community at large. But I didn't consider this a very strong argument, for several reasons. First (and least relevant to the current case), this wasn't general services, but unusual, special-purpose ones. Second, I think you can draw a philosophical distinction between supplying your own tax base free of individual charges, and charging outside your tax base. (State colleges have differential in-state and out-of-state tuition.) And thirdly: if libraries are that important, isn't public transit? The poor or handicapped may not even be able to get to the library without a bus. Yet transit, though massively publicly subsidized, charges user fees every time you get on it, and there's no discount for people in living in the service area. If you can charge bus fares, you can charge public library fees.
However. In economic history, I was taught the difference between a revenue tariff, which is designed to raise money, and a prohibitive tariff, which is designed to discourage trade in the item. The $80 fee being enacted here is a prohibitive tariff, not a revenue one, and I think that's bad news. They estimate a near-total disappearance of out-of-service-area users. But considering the extent the libraries are used (and this library system's parking lots are the most notoriously crowded in the county), that will only put greater pressure on the other libraries, and they may be forced to do the same thing, which will lead to a bunch of libraries that aren't getting more money - prohibitive tariffs are not intended to raise money - but that are glaring at each other with hostility and making life more difficult for their users.
It may be, though, that even a small fee would wind up being prohibitive rather than revenue-raising. The library enacting the fee is not part of the big and staggeringly convenient automated patron-operable ILL system that covers much of the state, but five of the six other library systems in the county are members, and their patrons who need to borrow books their own library doesn't have may be content with that. On the other hand, ILL is not always a convenient answer, and patrons have other needs. That this library's branches are open more hours and have more computers than other local libraries is a big selling point.
B. and I, however, don't need a library's computers. What we need is lots of books, and it's the opportunity for diminished patronage to be an excuse for fewer book purchases that worries me. We use this system a lot - its nearest branch is actually closer to our home than our own city library is - so I expect we'll pay the annual fee for one account to share (if we can get away with that), and then watch to make sure they still have the new books we need.
Surprisingly, perhaps, I'm not necessarily opposed to such an idea. I wrote a detailed report on library fee policies when I was in library school many years ago. At that time the issue was mostly over special services like inter-library loan and computer access (no web then; public library computer services of the day were mostly mediated searches in expensive proprietary scientific databases), though non-resident fees were also discussed, albeit rarely implemented. Everybody allowed late fees, but there was strong distaste for any other fees, and one principal argument against them: that library services were important enough that they ought to be supported by the community at large, rather than dinging the individuals who happened to need them.
Now, I am not a libertarian, and I'm all in favor of services being supported by the community at large. But I didn't consider this a very strong argument, for several reasons. First (and least relevant to the current case), this wasn't general services, but unusual, special-purpose ones. Second, I think you can draw a philosophical distinction between supplying your own tax base free of individual charges, and charging outside your tax base. (State colleges have differential in-state and out-of-state tuition.) And thirdly: if libraries are that important, isn't public transit? The poor or handicapped may not even be able to get to the library without a bus. Yet transit, though massively publicly subsidized, charges user fees every time you get on it, and there's no discount for people in living in the service area. If you can charge bus fares, you can charge public library fees.
However. In economic history, I was taught the difference between a revenue tariff, which is designed to raise money, and a prohibitive tariff, which is designed to discourage trade in the item. The $80 fee being enacted here is a prohibitive tariff, not a revenue one, and I think that's bad news. They estimate a near-total disappearance of out-of-service-area users. But considering the extent the libraries are used (and this library system's parking lots are the most notoriously crowded in the county), that will only put greater pressure on the other libraries, and they may be forced to do the same thing, which will lead to a bunch of libraries that aren't getting more money - prohibitive tariffs are not intended to raise money - but that are glaring at each other with hostility and making life more difficult for their users.
It may be, though, that even a small fee would wind up being prohibitive rather than revenue-raising. The library enacting the fee is not part of the big and staggeringly convenient automated patron-operable ILL system that covers much of the state, but five of the six other library systems in the county are members, and their patrons who need to borrow books their own library doesn't have may be content with that. On the other hand, ILL is not always a convenient answer, and patrons have other needs. That this library's branches are open more hours and have more computers than other local libraries is a big selling point.
B. and I, however, don't need a library's computers. What we need is lots of books, and it's the opportunity for diminished patronage to be an excuse for fewer book purchases that worries me. We use this system a lot - its nearest branch is actually closer to our home than our own city library is - so I expect we'll pay the annual fee for one account to share (if we can get away with that), and then watch to make sure they still have the new books we need.
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no subject
Date: 2011-05-04 09:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-04 09:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-04 09:26 pm (UTC)