of public finance. True, people do learn from reading both fiction and nonfiction for personal pleasure, but studies don’t exist proving that leads to socially valuable conditions for the community as a whole. There are economies of scale in sharing access to books and other materials. In mixed-income communities, access to the internet for all can comfortably be understood as a necessity. When certain job applications, communication from a child’s school, or government information is made available only online, it is arguably a matter of fundamental equality of opportunity for all people to have free computer access at the public library. Some services can be viewed either as amenities or as necessities. For example, if story hours are offered principally because children and their caregivers love them, they are properly understood as amenities. If they are provided in response to a shared community commitment to the right of every child to enter school ready to read, they are necessities. If one claims “necessity” status for a particular library service, several conditions are required for legitimacy. The claimer must: articulate and show public support for the relevant shared public condition it contributes to, demonstrate how the service contributes to creating this condition (effectiveness), prove the service is available equitably to all, know how much it is used and by whom (extensiveness), and understand the resource costs of the service (efficiency). Local variations occur in terms of whether library resources and services are understood and managed as necessities or amenities. Staff and board members are likely to have differing opinions within the same library system. An effective process can shape local discussions, leading to appropriate management decisions in hard times, as well as to appropriate strategies in community advocacy. Such a process should: n List all current library services. n For each service, state the goal in terms of intended benefits for the users. n For each service, state the socially valuable condition maximized by the provision of this service, if there is one. n Separate services into necessities and amenities. n For each service classed as a necessity, state the knowledge base used to design the service, the known outcomes, the extensiveness of use, and the cost of resources used to provide it. n For each service classed as an amenity, state the extensiveness of use, the cost of resources used to provide it, and the cost per use. There are good reasons to support the amenities offered by public libraries as well as the necessities. Effective approaches to funders, either elected or appointed, differ. Since most uses of most public libraries (leisure and personal interest) fall in the amenities category, support
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from users can be mobilized. People who read five novels a week or who are doing personal research will flood city hall with objections to noticeable service reductions. Sometimes their passionate support for the library as a whole is sufficient to secure adequate funding, sometimes it is not. As the 2008 OCLC study From Awareness to Funding demonstrates, however, library funding efforts often need supporters, not just users. Supporters believe in the transformative value of the public library in the community, even if they never use it. They believe in the importance of the “necessity” services for the whole community—homework help so all kids have a chance for school success, information for entrepreneurs so new businesses can be created and thrive, and so on. Libraries depending on their support must be able to go beyond anecdote in demonstrations of the outcomes of their transformative services. They should know, for example, how many people use the newly created job center, how many actually have found jobs, what percentage of the city’s unemployed this represents, and how the resources are used and valued by job seekers and employers. Stories of success help, but in hard times, numbers matter most. In tough times, simply staying on top of the various approaches effective in securing funding for the public library is hard work, requiring significant time and effort from library advocates and staff. Like all hard times, however, these offer opportunities to use the library’s bully pulpit to go beyond advocacy for our own needs. This is a time when creating powerful statements of socially valuable conditions for the entire community can have a helpful, unifying effect as well as provide a rationale for library service necessities. Libraries have moral authority in communities. We can assemble effective coalitions to develop public statements such as “A Children’s Bill of Rights” making overt assumed fundamental rights such as “All babies and young children in our community have the right to grow up in book rich environments so they enter school ready to read.” These statements will only be politically powerful if they represent a vision for the community and are crafted by an appropriate coalition of stakeholders. Ineffective if created by the library alone, they will rightfully be perceived as self-serving. These hard times invite us to assume community leadership, not just library leadership. z Eleanor Jo (Joey) Rodger has served as CEO of the Urban Libraries Council and of ALA’s Public Library Association as well as a practicing public librarian in rural, suburban, and urban libraries prior to her semi-retirement in 2004. She continues her connections to public libraries as a part time executive search and management consultant with Gossage Sager Associates/Bradbury Associates and as an appreciative customer of her local public library in Evanston, Illinois. This article derives from a consideration of the issues of public amenities and necessities with the board of trustees and administrative staff of the Fairfax County (Va.) Public Library. Thanks to Director Edwin S. Clay III and to the Library Foundation.
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