Libraries are heavily invested in the success of their communities. And while sometimes it may seem that the value we provide back to our service area is hard to quantify, it is possible to find a reasonably accurate estimate. Read on to learn more.
To get an idea of our value to the community, we start by counting how much our various services are used. We keep lots of statistics on all sorts of things at the library, head over to our stats page to see it all. Then we multiply that usage by the costs involved.
It's easier to put a dollar amount on some services over others. For example, we know exactly how much each book or DVD cost us when we bought it, so we can tell you how much you saved by checking out the book from your library instead of purchasing it yourself. You'll see that number on every receipt when you checkout materials.
For other categories it gets more difficult. Here's how we come up with the pricing for our value numbers, evaluating them on an annual basis:
Program Attendance: from lectures, to crafts, to concerts, to movie nights, and more, we put on hundreds of programs each year! Prices vary, of course, but if you were going to programs like these at a business, you could expect to pay $10 per ticket on average.
Faxes: we ask around how much other business and libraries charge for a fax page sent or received. $2 per page is pretty common.
Free Prints: if you're a student or on a job hunt, your school documents and job search documents are on us! Figuring out this value is easy: the number of prints multiplied by our price per print.
Notary Services: we offer notary services by appointment at all six of our locations for free! The state of Michigan has a maximum fee of $10 per notarial act, and charging this maximum seems to be the norm now.
Digital Services Use: this is when you download an audiobook or ebook from one of our services. Or use one of the premium online services we provide to research your family history or learn something new. Comparable services you could pay form at home are Ancestry, Babel, Kindle Unlimited, Disney+, etc. Averaged over all these services, we can count about $7 of value per use.
Computer Use: companies like the UPS Store, Rent-A-Center, FedEx Kinkos, and internet/gaming cafes in bigger cities, offer computers with all the usual productivity software, plus scanners and printers. These are often rented by the hour or minute. Rent-to-own stores provide similar services on a weekly or monthly basis. Looking at all the offerings in our area gets us to a figure of $5 value per hour when you use our computers. This number is even more reasonable when you consider we also add high-speed internet access and friendly library staff ready to help you when you need it.
Wifi Use: our high-speed internet is available for you to use, 24-hours a day, at all of our library branches. To get an idea of the value of this service, we average mobile wifi hot spot plan from AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, along with the Internet prices from Charter/SPectrum and the Coldwater Board of Public Utilities. That averages out to about $70 per month, or about $0.13 per hour (assuming 18 hours of use in a day). It's an even better deal since there are no bandwidth caps at the library like you might have at home.
