The Public Library-Free or Fee?
WHITE, LAWRENCE J.
THE PUBLIC LIBRARY-FREE OR FEE? BY LAWRENCE J.WHITE Christmas Book Issue Most of us look on the free public library as one of our rights, like free public education. This derives, in part, from...
...It is even possible that fees would attract users...
...The benefits of such charges, on the other hand, would be substantial...
...Librarians might become more responsive to students and children, and not give their requests short shrift, if they were the specific justification for public subsidy...
...Again, the available evidence has consistently shown that the public library's clientele is predominantly middle and upper-middle income and white collar...
...It took the middle-class exodus from the large central cities in the '50s to make librarians realize this...
...Libraries were high on the list...
...For example, public libraries probably over-catalogue their materials...
...In addition, charging fees would enhance the public library's ability to develop new, innovative services...
...and a belief that students are not its most important clientele...
...Clearly, therefore, if further erosion is to be prevented in the present Proposition 13 climate, some of the realities that have until now been successfully ignored must be faced...
...By lending a book at five or six cents a day and by charging an annual membership fee—say, $5 for individuals and $10 for families—libraries would be in a position to fulfill their customers' demands...
...And as funds become scarcer, that gap will continue to widen...
...Circulation charges might, of course, result in a drop in the number of patrons...
...indeed, some object to many of the existing fees...
...But the problem of reference service for students will remain as long as the public library is outside the formal educational system...
...No need to worry about shrinking altruism...
...at least to those who want it...
...they simply want service...
...The public library does perform one function that justifies its claim on the taxpayers' money: the education of children...
...With only a few exceptions, these special efforts have not succeeded...
...That is why library funding is a legitimate concern for public policy, notwithstanding that libraries use only a tiny fraction of all government funds (in 1974, the figure was .24 per cent...
...Fees might produce a whole new clientele...
...Yet at 1978 incomes and prices for other goods and services, users who do not consider library books a good buy (or rental) at 42 cents a week may be assumed to be either wealthy enough to purchase their own books or diminish, too...
...Moreover, librarians may favor the instructional approach less as an educational device than as a means of reducing future pressures on their own time —in effect, as a means of rationing a scarce resource...
...One such reality is that, in our society, the value of a service does not alone justify making it available at the expense of the taxpayer...
...But either because of inadequate publicity or because opportunities for self-education are less attractive than they had been thought to be, even with the incentive of course credit, the response was quite modest...
...This derives, in part, from our folklore: the belief that the library is the informal school in which generations of immigrants have learned English, prepared themselves for citizenship, and imbibed the American way of life...
...Students use it in connection with their schoolwork, and younger children learn to read there...
...Consequently, charging adults and businesses a fee for its basic services would seem to be a possible and feasible answer to its recent financial problems...
...In many libraries, though, they continue to be restricted as to the number or type of books they can check out, denied the interlibrary loan service granted to adults, and refused help by reference librarians...
...ambivalence about the public library's proper role in the educational process...
...Perhaps their facilities should be improved, but this costs...
...A relatively small number of people might slop borrowing, but a relatively large number of poor people would cease to finance, through sales and property taxes, services from which they had never derived much benefit...
...Currently librarians make allocation decisions on an ad hoc basis...
...One might counter that free provision of certain services encourages a generosity and altruism that commercial enterprise discourages...
...There is, then, a considerable gap between the myth of the free public library and the reality...
...resources would be less strained...
...All this reflects the fear that students are not mature enough, on their own, to make proper use of free library services (especially the librarian's time...
...The extra costs of this do not yield commensurate benefits to patrons...
...The term "information" is interpreted broadly, to encompass both the public library's traditional services and help to individuals in coping with the labyrinths of government and the complexities of modern society generally...
...The taxpayers, for the most part, pick up the tab...
...Any innovation that promised to lacking in motivation (o read...
...As circulation in large urban systems declined, it was suddenly "discovered" that poor people tended not to use libraries...
...For most bright, ambitious people in the profession, the juvenile division is not where the action is...
...Libraries should keep receiving money to supplement lower fees for students and to provide children—as well as the poor and the aged—with free service...
...They set up "independent learner" programs linked to the College Level Examination Program run by the College Entrance Examination Board...
...During the late 1950s and early 1960s, largely as a result of the baby boom, juvenile circulation outstripped adult circulation, and teen-age students streamed into adult divisions of public libraries in unprecedented numbers...
...Police and fire protection, for example, satisfy the necessary criteria...
...Studies have cast serious doubt on the public libraries' ability to dispense accurate, up to date information...
...Today, junior and senior high school students account for over 25 per cent of adult library circulation...
...Fiction constitutes slightly less than half of all adult circulation...
...The market mechanism is still the routine way of meeting consumer demands...
...The remainder use public libraries most often for "recreation" and "personal information"—everything from "serious" books on American history and foreign affairs to how-to, travel and pop psychology—and somewhat less often for professional purposes...
...That many government services—including water supply, marriage licenses, toll roads, building permits, municipal swimming pools and parking lots—involve fees does not impress them...
...Service to students and children would receive direct government support...
...Like lunch, information is not free, nor are library services generally...
...In part, it is an expression of our traditionally strong feeling about the importance and power of the printed word...
...A number of librarians, feeling that the quiet, respectful, even reverential attitude towards books and learning encouraged by their profession repelled the poor, began to advocate a more informal, less forbidding atmosphere...
...The widespread notions that "you get what you pay for" and, conversely, that free goods are not worth very much, have discouraged some people from setting foot inside a library...
...And if they do not get it they may stop coming...
...Confusion and hypocrisy about the library's educational function would generate enough revenues to cover the cost would be worth attempting...
...Librarians contend, too, that they are helping the poor and intellectually underprivileged...
...The public library, as currently constituted, does not...
...Book availability would improve, encouraging greater use...
...The response of librarians amounted to a cry of "Get them out of here...
...But the mainstream library journals publish very few articles on children's librarianship, and in informal discussions of the subject, the disparaging term "Kiddie Lit" often figures prominently...
...Reference librarians, in particular, debate the merits of direct service for customers (finding the information they need, fetching the books they want) against the merits of teaching them how to do these things themselves...
...In the early 1970s, a number of large, urban public libraries tried to obtain certification for the autodidacts they believe are an important clientele...
...Nonetheless, many users do not want to learn...
...A tax-supported institution, they argue, should not impose further charges on its taxpayer patrons...
...As of the late-1970s, both adult and child users remain predominantly middle and upper-middle class, but the children of low income families do make more use of the public library facilities than do low income adults...
...They are interfering with our service to our regular patrons...
...Revenues would, further, give librarians a useful guide to resource allocation...
...A few libraries even offer businesses reference-information research for a fee...
...Like "service to all," the old slogan, it is both catchy and irrelevant...
...A reasonable way, it seems to me, for the library to escape its current dilemmas is to institute a "fee-for-service" policy...
...Borrowers would acquire an incentive to return books promptly...
...Few directors of larger public library systems started their careers as children's librarians...
...As a form of education the latter view is consistent with public subsidy of the library...
...Librarians are even divided on how to deal with adults, their preferred patrons...
...Interestingly, less than a quarter of adult patrons ask librarians for assistance: Have the other three-quarters successfully learned their lessons on how to use the library, or have they merely chosen to avoid dealing with the librarian and to cope as best they can on their own...
...Librarians are strenuously opposed to this...
...Government may provide a service free when it benefits society as a whole, or ?hen giving it to one person substantially benefits others...
...But that is not the case: Private donations provide less than 10 per cent of the financing for library services, and unpaid volunteers account for only about 1.5 per cent of the total labor supply in public libraries...
...Nevertheless, across the country libraries are facing increasing economic difficulties...
...And in California itself, meanwhile, service has been cut drastically...
...A final note: Some librarians, motivated by educational and egalitarian ideals, are now promoting a new concept of the public library as the community's central source of information...
...This would indeed be worrisome if volunteer work and private donations were conspicuous features of the library system, as they once were...
...But no public library has ever required even minimal payment for basic services, lending books and providing reference assistance to nonbusiness patrons...
...Still, the fact is that only 30 per cent of the adult population takes advantage of the library to any significant extent, and a quarter of that group accounts for three quarters of adult use...
...The profession has a deep-seated conviction, amounting to a faith, that the purpose of the public library is to insure free access to books, and any move likely to be inhibiting?however beneficial it might ultimately prove—is quietly dismissed...
...Some libraries responded by channeling extra resources into branch libraries serving poorer areas (although, in several well-documented instances, others routinely provided inferior service to the poor...
...Lawrence J White, whose article based on research he is at present conducting for the Twentieth Century Fund, is Professor of Economics at NYU's Graduate School of Business...
...By addressing that concern in a coherent and rational fashion, librarians may ultimately become more effective in providing "service," if not to all...
...Of course, many libraries have long been charging for special services: borrowing current best-sellers, interlibrary-loans, reservations, film rentals, equipment rentals, photocopying...
...Someone has to pay...
...service for business, personal or recreational purposes would by and large pay for itself...
...A third of the library-going adults are there to help their children with their schoolwork...
...After Proposition 13 was passed last year, polisters asked Americans which public services they regarded as expendable...
...It is also maintained that libraries are "a people's university," although they do not offer degrees—and in a society that values certification, education with nothing to show for it requires more self-motivation than most people can muster...
...Rising costs, inflation and budget slashes have in many cases forced a reduction in the hours they are open as well as cutbacks in the number of hooks and periodicals being purchased...
...Even when they buy their catalogue cards from the Library of Congress, they frequently "customize" them to conform with longstanding local practices...
...A citizen's right to free information" has become the new slogan...
...This is not to say that government subsidies should stop...
...But it is to say that reliance on subsidies must be significantly reduced...
Vol. 62 • December 1979 • No. 24
