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August 7, 2007
Another Study Confirming the Value of Libraries
Here's a link to an article in the Wilke-Barre Pennsylvania Times Leader.
It builds on what we learned from the Florida, South Carolina, Bulfalo and Ohio studies. Libraries greatly help local economies. Congratulations on getting the word out. Hereare some samples from the article:
"Luzerne County public libraries are a private-market powerhouse, adding more than $16 million to the economy in 2006, according to a new, federally funded study. Not bad for a system that costs taxpayers a total of about $3.7 million, proponents argue."
"Libraries save users another $84 million by providing information they otherwise would not be able to find on things like home repair and bargain shopping.
Libraries themselves spur the economy through wages paid to employees and the purchase of equipment and supplies. If all the state’s public libraries closed for a year, that would mean a total of $248 million never pumped into the economy. And businesses around the library would lose $80 million in sales as well.
To get that bottom-line return on investment, the study added up all these estimated losses – which Aerni stressed were very conservative calculations – to total nearly $1.4 billion statewide, then divided that by the total tax money used to support libraries – $249 million."
Lots more nuggets in the article and the original UNC study.
Is it time for everyone in public libraries to do this process and localize this knowledge?
Stephen
Posted by stephen at August 7, 2007 2:38 PM
Comments
Dear Stephen!
During IFLA conference you said that your slides will be at your blog. I hope I am on the correct one. But unfortunatly I could not find the file. Is it still possible to get this usefull information?
My name is Ekaterina Shibaeva (Russian State Library), and I am writing my theses on Knowledge management in libraries. So I really need to read more carefully your paper for the better and correct understanding of KM in modern libraries. May be you can also recommend to look on some other resourses?
Thank you in advance.
Ekaterina
Posted by: Ekaterina at September 18, 2007 3:01 PM