Libraries can be economic engines, directors say

Libraries are more than books, DVDs and computer terminals. They can be, its directors contend, economic drivers.

“We circulate close to 900,000 items per year,” Marion Public Library Director Doug Raber said, “and with nearly 30,000 visitors per month - that's almost 1,000 people a day to the library.

“We are probably the primary traffic draw to uptown Marion.”

Raber used those figures to show public libraries are potential drivers of economic development for cities.

“Libraries are still very much in demand and still very used and could really anchor traffic flow for other businesses that could market their products to the same people who are using the libraries.

“Not only readers of books but also people who would be interested in content that's in those books.”

Raber's observations underscore the possibilities. “We have noticed that we have a lot of users of gardening books,” he said. “It might not be a bad idea for a business that caters to gardeners to think about locating near such a library. This kind of thing is very possible.”

“Overall, we work with a budget of  $1.7 million dollars,” Raber said. “About 90 percent of our funding is local property-tax funded by the city of Marion.

“Other sources of revenue, like the Open Access Fund, come from the state to support our providing materials to people outside our district.

“We have contracts with the city of Robins and with Linn County to provide library service, so that brings in a little bit of money for us, and we still get a fair amount of money from fines,” he said.

In 2011 the Cedar Rapids Public Library's overall circulation total was 810,000 items.

“Libraries across the United States in general have had an uptick of 3 to 5 percent over last year, so our growth factor as an industry is about 5 percent a year,” said Bob Pasicznyuk, director of the Cedar Rapids Public Library. “Year averages can vary, of course,” he added, “but we went up this last year about 15 percent.”

The single most influential item that contributed to that may be surprising.

“This was the first year that movies overtook all our other formats,” he explained. “We circulated more movies than any other format item.”

The CRPL, whose new facility is currently under construction with a target completion date of summer 2013, employs 45 full-time employees and operates on an annual budget of 4.7 million dollars.

The largest share of its budget - 82 percent - comes from city appropriations. Another 4 percent comes from a special levy the taxpayers enacted 10 years ago to buy new books, 6 percent comes from gifts and grants and 5 percent comes from services the library renders to other libraries and districts.

“We provide IT service for Marion and Hiawatha,” Pasicznyuk added.

And then there are the fines and fees - “For this year I've actually budgeted around $90,000 for fines and fees,” Pasicznyuk said.

That circulation trend was mirrored at the Hiawatha Public Library, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2011.

“Our circulation numbers have jumped every year,” reported Jeaneal Weeks, library director since 2003. “In 1998, circulation was 84,659.

“Our circulation in 2010 to 2011 was 304,123 items. We had a big jump in 2008 because of the flood (which closed the downtown CRPL location), but we have not gone down since then.”

Iowa City Public Library Director Susan Craig noted that library has seen steady growth in services since opening an expanded and renovated building on the same site in 2004.

“We currently have 68,700 cardholders,” she figured, adding, “we have more cardholders than we have people in our city.”

She added that some 60 percent of funding comes from the basic Iowa City levy, and the other 30 percent from the additional library levy, fines, fee, contracts and foundation grants.

“We have a foundation that we've had since the early '90s, and the foundation returns $150,000 to $200,000 annually to the library,” Craig said.

In 2011, grants for the library totaled $284,000, and fines and fees raised around $200,000.

Craig agreed with the other library heads.

“Across the country - and in Iowa for sure, library use has remained very steady or increasing over the years against what some people would expect with all of the new ways that people can access books and things today,” she said.

“Libraries do things that people often need access to, such as our online databases - things that didn't exist 25 years ago. People use expensive databases that the community pays for through tax dollars just the way they used to pay for a set of encyclopedias.

“If people didn't have a set at home they could come to the library and use it,” she said. “Now, if you don't have a computer at home, you can come into the library and have access to that information.”