Ultimate Goal Is To Provide Best Library Service
Changes in city and county library services have aroused considerable turmoil and concern recently. While the concerns are valid, assertions about the Spokane County Library District have often been inaccurate.
One consistent theme is that city libraries are speeding toward the 21st century, leaving county libraries in the dust. If you don’t know better, you may be picturing rundown buildings, obsolete materials and computers, and poor service. Not true. The service offered by our dedicated and highly professional staff is second to none.
Our nine buildings are attractive and well-kept.
Since 1986, our community has invested in six new or newly remodeled and expanded libraries. The Argonne, Otis Orchards, Cheney, and Medical Lake buildings are new; the North Spokane and Valley libraries were tripled in size and totally renovated.
Our materials collection is well used. Based upon the latest available statistics, our collection use per capita is above the average for library systems of our size in Washington. In 1994 alone, we spent almost $500,000 on 50,000 new items. At 12 percent of our total budget, our materials expenditures are similar to the proportion spent by the city library from its regular budget.
In 1981, SCLD pioneered automation of area libraries, at that time including the city system, community college and Eastern Washington Unversity libraries, creating a joint computer system that was a model in the United States With an upgrade of that system only five years ago, our computer services were state of the art. With some new software and additional equipment, our libraries could offer high-tech services similar to those the city is now offering - magazine article searches, Internet and dial-in access.
A second theme we’ve been hearing is that the city library recently inaugurated fees for nonresidents because library district officials refused to negotiate a reasonable payment for the cost of serving county residents.
The library district operates on funding from a dedicated property tax. It receives no funds from the Spokane County budget. The district operates nine libraries countywide on 40 percent less per capita than the city has to operate five.
Our funding does not increase just because demand does. The one-time increases we derived from new property valuations merely made up for two years when property tax valuations remained level.
In addition to a successful 1988 construction bond election, our community invested in its library services by passing levy override elections in 1983 and 1993 to keep property tax funding at the maximum rate allowed by law.
It costs city libraries more to serve nonresidents than it does district libraries. That’s not surprising, given the main library’s location, convenient to shoppers and employees downtown. And the cost per service unit is higher in the city, so that even if cross use were equal, city library costs would be higher.
In preliminary conversations, it appeared that the cost for the city to continue extending borrowing privileges to county residents might range from $100,000 for limited service up to as much as $300,000 for full service. There was no way for the library district to meet this new expense without seriously curtailing operations and reducing the services our customers have grown to expect.
While we have an immediate concern for the young people in fringe areas who depend upon convenient access to library services as a central part of their education - and while we have addressed this concern by providing library cards for all youth in the county, regardless of residence - our long-term goal continues to be the most cost-effective use of our resources in carrying out our mission as a library.
The measure of our success is not in the amount of money we spend or in what we’re able to buy, it’s in satisfying our customers’ library needs and in providing them with the best possible customer service.
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