Communities hire private firms to manage public libraries

USA Today reports:

A big, red "Closed" sign has been plastered across the front door of the library here since mid-April, when Jackson County ran out of money to keep its 15 branches open.

In a few weeks, the sign will come down and the doors will be opened again, now that the county has come up with an unusual cost-saving solution: outsourcing the running of its libraries.

The county will continue to own the buildings and all the books in them, but the libraries will be managed by an outside company for a profit. The librarians will no longer be public employees and union members; they will be on the private company's payroll.

Library patrons might not notice much difference, but the librarians will, because the company plans to get by with a smaller staff and will have a free hand to set salaries and benefits.

"The average citizen, when they walk into the library, they will see well-trained, well-educated, customer-service-oriented people working in the library," said Bob Windrow, director of sales and marketing at Germantown, Md.-based Library Systems and Services (LSSI), the company taking over.

For years, state and local governments have been privatizing certain functions, such as trash collection, payroll processing and road maintenance. Contracting with an outside company to run a library is a relatively new phenomenon, one that has been gaining in popularity as communities look for ways to save money.

The practice has generated a backlash from those who argue that municipalities are employing a backdoor method of union-busting, and those who say such profit-making ventures go against the notion that libraries are one of the noblest functions of government in a democracy.

Government workers cost a lot of money.Look for more pressure on this front.