   
Social Responsibilities Discussion Group Paper
Fees for Library Services
Kristine Abelsnes
To charge or not to charge? Is that the equivalent for libraries to
Hamlet's "to be or not to be?" Some say it is, some say it's not. The
question of charging for library services is being discussed in many
countries (and has been for years). It is a complex issue, and in my paper
I will not be able to deal with it in detail, some will say that I maybe
just scratch the surface. It involves all kinds of publicly funded
libraries, and that in itself makes it complicated, as policies and
principles that govern these different types of libraries are varied and
sometimes unclear. I will , however, try to discuss what I consider to be
the basic considerations and principles of this issue.
Policy Issues
To some it is a question of how to manage the charging practically, and so
they organize workshops where economists and library managers will lecture
on "how to do it." For others it is an issue that has deep political
consequences for society and for different user groups. They will argue
that it is not at all a practical, or even economic, question. It is a
question of the very raison d'etre for publicly funded libaries. I am sure
many librarians and politicians will agree in principle that library
service is a common good, that free access to information is the backbone
of a free and democratic society. As an example, here is a statement from
the American Library Association: "The Association advocates funding and
policies that support libraries as a great democratic institutions, serving
people of all ages, income level, location, or ethnicity, and providing the
full range of information resources needed to live, learn, govern, and
work"(1).
And the UNESCO Public Library Manifesto states: "The public library shall
in principle be free of charge. The public library is the responsibility of
local and national authorities. It must be supported by specific
legislation and financed by national and local governments. It has to be an
essential component of any long-term strategy for culture, information
provision, literacy and education."(4)
But alas, libraries are also exposed to economic recessions and reduction
in funding, and this faces libraries constantly with the conflict between
ideals and economic reality and the dilemma of at least two
'discriminations':
- If I start taking fees for library services, no matter how small and
apparently within the economic capacity of the majority of users, I
discirminate against those people who are not able to afford the library
fees. They will no longer be able to use the library services and are
therefore bereft of an important democratic right.
- If I don't take fees, I will not be able to offer special services that
quite a few people will want and be able to pay for. Also these services
might create revenue to be used for basic services.
This is often felt to be a real dilemma, and maybe it is.
BUT - we have to consider some important issues concerning libraries.
Publicly funded libraries are most of all political instruments, they are
not businesses. They have, in most countries, been established as the
result of political decisions, for political reasons and to serve societal
purposes. These reasons and purposes may not be the same in every country,
and the importance of libraries may be differently emphasized, but usually
there is some kind of basic idea that libaries have a role to play in
cultural, educational and regional policy. Publicly funded libraries make
information and literature available also to groups and individuals that
are not (for some reason) being served by the market. Libraries are not in
a monopoly situation in the information market. On the contrary. But the
rest of the information market is essentially commercial. So far the
commercial information and book market are not threatened by libraries.
They have different roles and accept each others roles as long as the
'rules of the game' are followed. The problem is not the people who can
afford to buy information, literature and entertainment. A lot of people do
so today. The problem is the great economic differences in the world today,
and how we in some small, but important way through the libraries can
provide access for all to the world of information and the heritage of
literature and the written word. The problem is that we strive to obtain
equal access and that even small fees contribute to the opposite.
At a seminar at the Indaba in Harare last year, a librarian from Bulawayo
talked about how he had been told by the library board to charge an annual
fee for using the library. This fee was quite small, but the result was
that a lot of children who used to go the library before (when access was
free) had stopped coming after the annual fee was introduced. They simply
did not have the money, neiher had their parents, or their parents were not
able not put the library high up on their priority list. So there it is,
whether we like it or not. Surveys from Europe show the same - if payment
for library services is introduced, use of the library goes down
significantly, especially among children and young people. So if we think
there is excess use of library services, then charging is a way to deal
with that. If it is in the interest of society to limit access in that way,
that is another issue.
We see now a trend in countries where public library services have been
free of charge, to consider payment for what is often called "fringe" or
supplemental services. What these services may be, differs widely, and that
in itself should make some alarm bells ring. There is no consensus in the
library or the political community as to what constitutes a basic library
service that should be free of charge, and what are so called spesial,
value-added or supplemental services for which one can charge. Some say it
is online services, some say it is service to businesses or video rental or
urgent action-services, others say it is all services that are very
expensive for the library. Some academic libraries charge external users,
some don't. Charging policies differs from libary to library, from country
to country and has also differed during time. What is expensive today, may
be cheap tomorrow. What is a special service today, may be common tomorrow.
This in itself should make us very wary.
A list compiled by Alice Sizer Warner on services that some American
libraries charge for, consists of some 40 different items, including access
to the library, book loans, ILL and general information in addition to
photocopies, training and SDIs.(5) This indicates that there is a great
variety in what is being charged, and that it is a matter of where you
live, what university library you use etc. What then happened to equal
access?
However, it is common practice in libraries to charge for overdue books and
photocopies (which the user can keep). But here the user has an
alternative: He or she can deliver the books on time or can borrow, take
notes or read on site instead of making a photocopy.
The Domino Effect
It might not be unreasonable that a library charges for some of it
services, and quite a few users will be more than happy to pay for some
value-added services. But - there is a danger here of the so-called domino
effect. Once you start charging for this, you might as well charge for
that. It can be extremely difficult to draw the line between charged
services and no-charged services, and librarians will be under constant
pressure to charge more in order to increase revenue and/or reduce the use
of expensive services.
So, the following example from the UK is not unique when it comes to what
arguments are used for introducing fees :
"At Queen's University as student numbers rose and funds decreased
relatively, staff found it increasingly difficult to provide a "free"
service to external users who were becoming more information conscious and
more demanding. On the 15th May 1990 the Senate of the University agreed
"that the Library be permitted to introduce a fee-based library and
information service". It was felt that this would generate some additional
income and also enable the library to provide a service to people outside
the university who needed it while limiting numbers to a manageable
level."(3)
Subsidizing - Which Way?
The question of generating revenue through charging can however have
undesired side-effects. A lot of the libraries who have indtroduced special
fee-based services may find that these services do not subsidize the
'basic' library services as intended. In fact, often these fee-based
services are delivered at a price that does not cover the actual costs
involved in delivering the services. If that is the case, then libraries
may experience that these services are being subsidized by the very same
services that they were intended to bring additional funding to. There are
examples that some libraries have discontinued their fee-based services for
that reason. A closer scrutiny into the economics of the charging and the
revenue accumulated showed that they were in fact taking resources from the
public good services.
This is a general problem when publicly funded institutions enter the
market. It is not easy to separate the business part from the rest of the
operation. But that is probably a practical issue, after all. It is,
however, another matter whether a library should at all enter the
commercial market and not stay on its side of the playing field. This has
been the way libraries and the market have coexisted for a long time, and
most often to the benefit of both parties.
Information Value
Information has a value. Information is not as such free. Someone pays for
it and pays to make it available through the libraries. Usually the
information in libaries is paid for by public funds. So indirectly people
are paying through taxes. Libraries are considered a common good, and
making use of the libraries is not dependent on how much taxes you pay or
if you pay taxes at all.
People who defend the no-charge principle do not say that information has
no value and therefore should be free. What they say is that information
has a value also on a larger scale than as a mere commodity, access to
information has a political side to it, and that is why libraries are
established. It is not just an effective way of information distribution,
it is also an effective way of wealth distribution. Between what is now
called the information rich and the information poor.
Electronic Information Market
The information market is increasingly becoming international. This is
especially true about the electronic information market. The lines drawn
between libraries and the information marketplace are now more blurred. The
library without walls is meeting a market without walls. In the electronic
world some will argue that libraries have no place unless they join the
market. They have to play along to be part of the race. The most effective
way of distributing information is now directly from the author to the
user. Intermediaries like publishers or libraries will be obsolete in a
matter of time etc. They look at libraries as a deviation, a temporary
means of distributing information. There are strong economic interests
behind these arguments. But very often they forget or try to minimize the
political basis of libraries.
I am not saying that libraries should operate in the marketplace in direct
competition with the commercial markets. With the libraries' free access
policy there is attached limitations to what a library can do. For
instance: they can not make copies of books and distribute them for free or
in any other way violate the rights of the author. They can not make
databases available off site unless they have a specific agreement with the
data base vendor.
Often the limitations are connected to copyright law. Libraries have had
some privileges and exceptions from general copyright regulations in the
printed world. These privileges and exceptions have made libraries able to
give free access to information and literature that otherwise would only be
availbale in the market for a price.
Copyright for electronic information is now being modelles. What will be
the role of libraries in this new regime?
The then president of the Norwegian Library Association, Frode Bakken, gave
a presentation at the EBLIDA conference and workshop "New developments in
electroniccopyright", Copenhagen 12-13 February 1998. In his paper he says:
"If the societal need for library activities does not need to disappear in
the digital future. That is only if we believe that market forces by itself
will take care of wealth
distribution in general and in our field, cultural policy, educational
policy, regional policy and the need for democratic access to information.
I do not think these aims
will be fulfilled by market forces alone.
As we hear it is said - access free of charge is not acceptable in a
successful system
and can be considered maybe the main obstacle to the development in the
digital age.
If libraries change their role and enter into the commercial chain and
become normal
or maybe "unnormal" commercial outlets, there are of course some grave
political problems connected to this. The political support for publicly
financed libraries is to a large extent historically - and also today -
connected to the library ability to open access to everybody in society -
being part of the project to reduce the gap between information rich and
information poor. In this respect the library is the tool in general for
fulfilling this aim. So if free-of-charge libraries vanish on a large
scale, we must expect that political support for financing the library will
diminish and maybe fade away. This means that the library has to increase
the income from charges up to market price and will eventually become an
integrated part of the market. These considerations are especially relevant
to public library policies but also to a large extent to academic library
policies..." (2)
I agree with him that it is important to hold on to the principles of free
access to information as a political instruments also in new regimes and in
the so-called digital world. The media changes, but the importance of the
role of libraries in the development of society does not. This is not being
fundamentalist or unrealistic. This is a way ahead for libraries that I
believe will strengthen their position.
References
- ALA Goal 2000
- Bakken, Frode: "The possible role for libraries in the digital future"
(EBLIDA conference and workshop "New developments in electroniccopyright",
Copenhagen 12-13 February 1998)
- Latimer, Karen: "Free To Fee: The Current Account From An Academic
Library" (62nd IFLA General Conference - Conference Proceedings - August
25-31, 1996)
- UNESCO Public Library Manifesto
- Warner, Alice Sizer: "Making Money : fees for library services" (1989)
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