Tewksbury and Dartmouth, Mass., Consider Privatizing their Libraries
Talk about a delayed reaction. I woke up this morning thinking about how earlier this week I had seen a teaser in The Boston Globe for an article about public libraries I wanted to blog. I couldn’t remember which day’s paper held the news. It turns out Thursday’s paper explores Tewksbury and Dartmouth’s thoughts on taking their libraries private. The article is no longer available online, but I found a summary via UPI. Both communities are facing some tough decisions across the board due to a lack of funds. The libraries aren’t the only services that will suffer. “They’re all lousy ideas, but so is going broke,” opined Tewksbury’s Financial Planning Task Force chair Jay Kelley. Dartmouth has already closed one branch permanently and another temporarily. Some concerns about using a private firm to run the libraries include access to a variety of material, loss of certain state funding, and the implications of using a company whose main concern might be making a profit.
Rich here
Here’s the link to the Boston Globe article:
“Celeste Bruno - a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, which certifies public libraries - said Tewksbury and Dartmouth would be the first communities in Massachusetts to privatize their libraries. She said the library commissioners would oppose any such move.
“There is a huge difference between a private, for-profit company and a library which essentially belongs to the community and answers to every resident in the Commonwealth,” Bruno said.
Privatized libraries are not unheard of in other states. A Maryland-based company, Library Systems and Services LLC, called LSSI, runs 65 library branches in four states: Oregon, Texas, Tennessee, and California, according to Dean McCausland, LSSI president.
In a telephone interview, he said LSSI relies on taxes and grants, but not fees, to run the libraries and turn a profit for the company. LSSI generally does not hire unionized employees, helping it to save on benefits packages.”
