Look at that, it’s April. And I haven’t posted since halfway through February. I’ll spare you the school-and-work-and-volunteering-have-crushed-me excuses and just get on with posting, how about.
Because the Alberta government has gone ahead and announced 9 million more dollars for public libraries in the 2009 budget. They’re touting it as a 39% increase, even though 2 million is being nebulously invested in technology/innovation. This is exciting. It’s the logical conclusion to the MLA committee that was touring around the province last fall talking to librarians, practically asking to be advocated-upon. (You can see their report and recommendations at the bottom of the news release). But I’m a little wary, because I’m not convinced that this money is a) enough (of course) or b) going to go towards the issue that needs it most.
I’ve just finished up with Wendy Newman’s phenomenal, eye-opening and inspiring Libraries and Advocacy course over at UofT, where I spent most of my time looking into that embarrassing sore on the otherwise dewy visage of my province’s public library systems: illegally charging our users for cards.
I can’t really pretend to be impartial about this, even though I know it’s a divisive issue round these parts. Looking at why libraries do it (users cough up an additional 7% for each budget, on average) and what it means for user rates (a 20% drop in borrowers since a $10 fee was implemented in Edmonton in 1994; and likewise, a 40% jump in membership in Banff when they got rid of their fee in 2000), I just can’t buy into the arguments for doing it. I think this quote, from Pat MacNamee, a library consultant at Alberta Community Development, sums up the shiftiness of the practice pretty well:
“Libraries are not permitted to charge a membership fee. All members of the public are library members, with free access to the five or six basic services that the Act mandates. But library boards are permitted, at their option, to charge for the issuance of a library card, for use in tracking borrowed materials.” (Banff’s Very Public Library, Jan 2001)
Public libraries are not permitted to charge a membership fee. So why is it that Calgary Public Library wants $12 for what, anywhere else in the world, would be an absolutely free piece of plastic with my name and a barcode on it? It’s astonishing, and the arguments for the practice (we need the money; charging for our services makes people value us more; it’s not that much money to ask for anyway in our [formerly] oil-rich boomtown) fall flat against the thousands of libraries across America and the rest of Canada that manage to 1) get by, 2) be valued, and 3) not gouge their users by taking their taxes and then asking for more cash at the turnstile.
And yet, though the ethical, professional resolution to this argument is pretty clear everywhere else, in Alberta it’s a bone of contention. Consensus-building on this topic somehow seems limited to high fives over beers at the pub, or water-cooler eye-rolling with colleagues. And even though Banff Public Library’s 2000 survey found that 91% of librarians would abolish fees if they could get replacement funding from the province, is this $9 - oops, I mean $7 - million going to be viewed as that? A replacement (and then some) for the estimated $3 million libraries raise from charging for cards? Or is it going to be seen as a chancy but much-needed windfall that will go immediately into updating outdated collections and increasing already-decimated hours of operation?
The most unappetizing part about this practice, for me, is the fact that it effectively does two things: increases income and decreases use. Increases books and decreases people. Increases the time spent cataloguing or shelf-reading, and decreases the number of reference questions, story hours, literacy programs, external partnerships and outreach activities. The idea that library staff across the province are resisting the idea of increasing circulation and membership - our best and only purpose for existing - at the expense of 7% of their budget is a nasty, unpleasant thought that I don’t like to entertain. Up until now, I preferred to blame our overlords up in the legislature for not giving us enough of those billion dollar surpluses. It’s funny, that now with the oil money gone and an illegal deficit looming, libraries are getting the fair budgets we’ve been advocating for since the ’80s.
So now we don’t have any excuses. This budget increase is a fantastic opportunity for the province’s libraries to put our collective feet down and re-embrace our first and most important professional value: equality of access. With twice what it would take to make up our user fees in the bank, there’s absolutely no excuse not to join the rest of the world in doing our jobs, and making our buildings and services and little plastic cards free for all.
Also, you can check out these sources for more background:
Alberta Municipal Affairs. (2008, April 9). Public Library Statistics.
Hammond, J. (2007, January). Cash Cow: User Fees in Alberta Public Libraries. Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library & Information Practice & Research, 2(1), 1-22.
Shelley Mardiros. (2001). Librarians’ views on membership fees in Alberta.
Shelley Mardiros. (2001, Jan/Feb). Banff’s Very Public Library. AlbertaViews 4(1), 37-39.
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