How many libraries does a Council need?
How many libraries does a community need? It’s not a question I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about until recently, when three completely separate pieces of work for library services in Melbourne caused me to start looking at the distribution of libraries across the metro area. And now that I have spent time thinking about it, I’m glad I’m not the one who has to decide.
For starters – we know the correct answer is ‘a library in every house’. There are close to 2,000 books in my house, and the spare bedroom was built with floor to ceiling bookshelves across an entire wall. Piles of books by the bedside tables. Is that not true for everyone?
For book-lovers the answer might be ‘as many as we can get’. Take me back to the days when there was a milk bar within walking distance of home and put a little lending library in the corner beside the ice-cream freezer.
And of course, there are those who see no need for public libraries. They don’t read, or they don’t have time to read, or ‘Do people still read?’, or ‘Everything’s online now, and everyone has a computer and mobile phone, so why do we need a library?’ I’m not one of those people, and if you’re still reading this you’re probably not one either.
But it’s a question for which there appear to be different answers that depend not just on who you are, but also on where you live. Take the following chart, which looks at the average population per library branch for all 31 local government areas (LGAs) in metro Melbourne.
On average, across the metro area there are 36,000 people for every library branch. But the Greater Dandenong currently has two branches for a population of nearly 170,000, while the Kingston has nine branches to serve a population of almost exactly the same size. Surely this is inequitable? Well, Yes and No. Greater Dandenong has two large new (ish) libraries that are destinations within their local communities. Kingston’s libraries are a mix of large, medium, small, new and old (and in one case, by ‘old’ I don’t mean ‘quaint and charming’).
But more than the LGAs that live at the extremities of this chart, it’s the distribution that I find fascinating.
Because if you look for all of the interface Councils on the urban fringes (marked in yellow) you will find them at the upper end of the scale, with average population per branch ranging from 45,000 up to 80,000. You need a good sized library to properly cater for a community that big. And some of them are (thank you Hume for our new local Sunbury Library), while some are not.
Down at the other end of the chart we find the inner city LGAs (in green), where we find lots of neighbourhood libraries, catering for an average of 20,000 to 25,000 people. And whereas Wyndham and Hume (for example) have one library branch for every 100 sq km, in Yarra and Port Phillip there is a library every 4 sq km. That’s right – a library for every 4 sq km! You can pretty much walk to a library from your home in less than 15 minutes. Don’t try that in Melton or Cardinia. The inner city libraries are generally smaller than those in other areas, and the relatively high number of library branches harks back to a time when every inner city suburb had its own Council, Town Hall, library, swimming pool and football team. When Councils amalgamated, the Town Halls got repurposed and many of the pools closed - but the libraries remained open.
Which takes us back to the question of equity, because there is certainly inequity in access to library services in Melbourne depending on where you live. This does not, however, mean that the quality of service provided is necessarily better or worse in any area (although I will note that average Council spending per capita on libraries is 30-50% higher in inner city LGAs than in outer areas – maybe because they’re having to support too much infrastructure?).
In the end, the answer to my question of how many libraries we need is the same as it is to all of the important questions in life … 42. Only kidding (gratuitous reference to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). The answer is … it depends. The ‘right’ number of libraries depends on:
the size of the community
the geographic spread of the community
the demographic characteristics of the community and their demand for library services
the size, age and quality of the libraries provided
proximity to public transport and other community facilities
the financial constraints under which Council’s work (rate capping?).
And that’s before we factor in the capacity of a community to demand services from their Council – armed with (or in the face of) overwhelming evidence about the need (or not) for a library branch. I’m happy to provide objective evidence (for or against), but better that those decisions be left to representatives answerable to their local community.