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Knowing the dollar value of your library's services may be a useful tool for informing your community about the worth of your library and why it deserves support. Here's a summary of the responses to the question posed recently by a CTLS librarian about the value of reference service. Several CTLS librarians suggested contacting Glen E. Holt ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), former Director of the St. Louis Public Library, who made a presentation at TLA Conference called "The Economic Value of Public Libraries." Holt describes his method in "Placing a Value on Public Library Services" at http://www.slpl.lib.mo.us/libsrc/rescbec.htm Nancy Hill, Coordinator at WTLS, replied that "We have just completed a series of 3 workshops on activity based costing in which each of the libraries arrived at a unit cost for several cost centers including reference. One of our libraries that we have the calculations for came to $.76 per question. We are planning to compile the unit costs from each of those attending to establish a WTLS benchmarking data." Nancy expects to have the results ready in a few months, and she has promised to send them to us. If you want to get started right away, the Massachusetts Library Association has a table with typical values at http://www.masslib.org/LibraryValue.html. Bob Gaines
