Preserving libraries: Cost-cutting is the way to the future, but how?
PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE Editorial: Like other states, Pennsylvania has reduced funding for public libraries — in its case by 34 percent since 2008. Faced with this dwindling support, libraries often seek to reduce costs by expanding their e-book collections, limiting hours of operation or closing branches altogether…
In a budget proposal designed to “preserve the unique relationship each library has with its community,” the County-City Library Service Panel has expressly resisted the consolidation of print collections or the closing of library branches. Rather, it seeks to reduce costs through the creation of a single entity responsible for digital and intra-library services throughout the county — leaving the autonomy and character of each library largely intact.
If the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and the Allegheny County Library Association decide to adopt the proposal, we hope the eventual savings will be meaningful. If not, more sweeping measures will be necessary to sustain local libraries into the future… (more)
EDITOR: Look out Pittsburgh! The idea of centralizing certain services is good, and in fact that used to be what was done ecoomically for the various countywide libraries in the basement of the downtown Lancaster Public Library on Duke Street.
But with the creation of the Lancaster Library System, a bureaucracy was spawned that’s goal has been to seize more and more of library money coming from county and state while providing little in return.
Commissioner Craig Lehman and others have proposed that the Library System be required to sell its services to individual libraries, rather than being funded largely by the county (at the expense of the ‘real’ libraries). The ‘free market’ would lead to the Library System shrinking down to an efficient, cost effective size. Everyone would benefit…except maybe the System bureaucrats.
