How to be the best library in Australia
In one of my early blog pieces in July 2020 (https://www.analibraryse.com/blog/australias-best-community-library-part-2-checklists) I explored the idea of Australia’s best community library.
“I believe that every public library in Australia is now, or could be, ‘the country’s best community library.’ And it could all happen simultaneously and continuously, because just as every community is unique, every library needs to be unique too – delivering a mix of core library services that best meet the particular needs of its community.”
I was reminded of this a couple of weeks ago when I was asked to speak to a library service’s strategic planning day about:
“where we sit in relation to other library services (members, loans, costs, etc.), particularly other large libraries.”
Knowing this large outer urban Victorian library very well it should have been a straightforward exercise – pull the data and put together a few tables and charts lining them up against national standards, state averages and a selection of similar libraries. But it was there that I ran into trouble, because you cannot meaningfully undertake a library benchmarking exercise if you do not first understand the context in which the library operates. Things like population size, location, community demographics, corporate structure, history, etc. And as I started to write this up I realised that half my presentation was going to be caveats about why the data I was about to present wasn’t wholly reliable – or not in itself a complete picture.
There is way too much data in my presentation to repeat here, but let me share the highlights. And for the purposes of anonymity I will call this library service Freedonia.
Size: Being a statistician I love a Bell curve. But as a statistician I also know that while the normal distribution is great for understanding where most things sit, it becomes less reliable the further you get from the norm. Of the 450 library services in Australia, the 15 largest (including Freedonia) all have populations in excess of 300,000. Brisbane City Council alone serves more than 1.2 million people, compared with the Shire of Sandstone (central WA) which has a population of 109 (No, not 109,000 … the LGA has 109 people). Standards and industry benchmarks work best around the norm, but get a bit rubbery at the extremities, especially when you start mixing industrial size efficiencies of scale with per capita benchmarks. Large libraries can carry less stock per capita. Program development and business management costs get spread across many areas. Freedonia is big, so I have to be careful what I say.
Location: No Bell curve here, but we know that libraries in inner urban areas are different to those in outer areas, and different again from those in rural areas. In Victoria (for example), average population catchment per library branch is 20,000 in the inner city and average drive times to the library are about 5 minutes. In the fast-growing interface Councils the average catchment is over 60,000 and it takes 12-15 minutes to get to a library. Hence, more smaller libraries vs fewer larger libraries, so cost differentials, stock range, minimum staff demands, etc.
Demographics: Not to mention that there are different demographics at play in different locations in terms of age profile, life stage, housing density, employment, education, income, internet access, etc. and therefore different demands for library collections, programs and spaces. Consider, Mornington Peninsula Shire has 34% of the population aged over 60 years and 13% under 12. Next door the City of Casey has 15% over 60 and 19% under 12. Different vibe in those libraries. Another way of looking at this is to use my Reading vs Activity vs Place classification (https://www.analibraryse.com/blog/australias-best-community-library-part-1-type). 2022-23 Victorian data shows that libraries in highly educated high SES Whitehorse Manningham have a very high rate of loans per capita, while visits and program participation are around average. That makes it a ‘Reading’ community. Down in Geelong the wide range of programs for people of all ages and interests are a big hit (an ‘Activity’ community), while in Gannawarra up on the Murray River many of the older community love to pop into the library for a comfy chair and a chat (a ‘Place’ library).
Structure: This also relates to size, but one of the reasons Victorian Councils formed library corporations was to realise economies of scale. Larger libraries with bigger populations spread costs. Average 2022-23 cost per capita for library corporations $37-38, average for stand-alone Council library services $47 in metropolitan areas and $44 in the regions.
I could go on.
Library membership and loans per capita are higher in inner and metro areas because people live closer to a library.
Loans per capita are higher in high SES areas because there are more highly educated readers.
Loans per capita are higher among older populations as people have more leisure time to read. (And yet many older populations are in rural areas where people don’t live really close to a library).
And then there are differences within LGAs (think areas around Sydney’s northern and southern beaches), and gentrification in what were once inner urban low SES areas. Let alone a library corporation that combines small green wedge high SES Nillumbik with the young family-oriented population explosion in nearby Whittlesea.
Did you know average attendance at library programs in NSW is 30-40% below that in Queensland and Victoria (and has been for many years)?
Now I know some of this analysis is too simplistic but you get the point – different communities have different demands and expectations. And that’s before I even get to thinking about whether Freedonia is a library service that is well-supported by its Council(s) and well-led by an enthusiastic innovative flexible library team.
By the time I got my head around size and location and demographics and structure I couldn’t find a ‘similar’ library to Freedonia. And all the ones that were ‘mostly close’ still needed some footnoting to explain variations in context that impacted the cost of service provision and the level of library use. I thought about coming up with some multivariate statistical model to accommodate all the different dimensions of libraries (and I may do that one day), but then I stopped to draw breath and wondered if there is a simpler way to tackle this problem.
So in a couple of weeks I am off to Freedonia to kick start their planning day, and after all of the caveats here is what I am going to say.
I believe your starting point is NOT to be the best library in Australia.
IF you deliver what your community needs – understanding your community, social trends, industry developments and library standards …
AND IF you can demonstrate that you make a positive difference in your community(ies) …
… WHAT DOES IT MATTER where you sit on the league table?
You just need to top YOUR league table.
And if you can do both those thingsthat, I’m prepared to call you the BEST library in Australia.
Which means the next time I’m asked to review a library service I will still be pulling all the benchmarking data, I will still be running my tape measure over everything that moves, but I will be taking even greater care to ensure that every comparison and every conclusion is made in context – because Context is King. And in LibraryLand … context = community.