National Library Week: A Day Without a Library

How long can you go without a library? Just thinking about their economic value, the Library Research Service published a comparison of studies done on the return on investment value to individual tax payers in different public library systems. California yields one of the highest rates reported.

Check out this Library Value Calculator where anyone can enter the number of times they have availed themselves of various library resources and get an estimate of its monetary value. (You can follow a pop-up link on the bottom of the page to see how the values were calculated. The amount assigned to each service may be arbitrary but it is a reminder that library resources are not free. Taxpayers, Friends of Libraries, philanthropists, and grants pay for your library privileges. In the case of academic libraries, tuition and fees pay for the library. (Oh, and overdue fines.)

You can probably go a long time without going to a library but libraries are a public good.

Noam Chomsky  in 2015
Wikimedia Creative Commons

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Library Quote of the Day

“It is easier to go to the Internet than to go to the library, undoubtedly. But the shift from no libraries to the existence of libraries was a much greater shift than what we've seen with the Internet's development.” Noam Chomsky (BrainyQuote.com)