A great, educational video via PrivitizationBeast.org, a web-based rallying cry to stop corporate takeovers of libraries.

Here’s a snippet from a recent blog post:

Last year, Santa Clarita’s City Council rammed through a vote to privatize their library system with very little community input. Community members were understandably outraged, and attended several public hearings requesting more community involvement in the decision-making process. Instead of listening to residents, the City Council created a “Citizen’s Advisory Committee” to review Santa Clarita’s library system and its needs and make recommendations for moving forward with LSSI. The committee had no decision-making power, and was widely criticized as a thinly veiled attempt to silence critics.

Oh, but it gets better. The City Council invited LSSI executive Ron Dubberly to chair – or, technically, ‘facilitate’ – this committee. In other words, the committee created to advise on the city’s relationship with a private company is being controlled by that same private company. Dubberly has been President of LSSI’s Public Library Management Operations since 2008.[full post]

That’s madness and a little perturbing. Privatisation is not the best idea. There is no guarantee that privatising something will save costs. For example, last year the Ottawa city garbage workers were able to take away the trash at a cost lower than the lowest private-sector bid.

But, I don’t know if I totally agree with the slippery slope they lay out in the video. Used bookstores and cafés are not so onerous. In the case of cafés, there is an opportunity to build a locally focused business with a strong ethical aspects, such as a commitment  fair trade coffee, compostable cups, etc. Also, no one really is against paying for photocopies, a long standing revenue stream used to offset the cost of the photocopying service.

Moreover, I think in times of tighter budgets  public libraries could look for a couple more revenue options to soften the costs of services that are more expensive and/or infrequently used. It’s not such a novel idea. Public libraries already charge a fee for out-of-towners to take out books.

Libraries can easily strike a balance between charging for select services and free/open access. It’s nothing new for other community services. For instance, some publicly funded family/community counselling centres offer costly services priced on a sliding scale. This is done basically on an honour system – you pay what you informally and privately claim you can.

Though not optimal (free would be best), a sliding scale model would allow for services to be available at negligible costs where offering them for free would mean they wouldn’t be offered at all. I don’t see why this framework wouldn’t work in a library.

Anyways, people of Santa Clarita, good luck fighting the Beast!