BANFF'S VERY PUBLIC LIBRARY

By Shelley Mardiros
Published in “Alberta Views”
Vol. 4, No. 1, January/February 2001

From the outside, the little brown building at the corner of Bear and Buffalo streets has a certain rustic charm, occasionally enhanced by the presence of an elk grazing on the lawn. But to find out what's really special about the Banff Public Library, a newcomer to Banff would have to enter the doors, approach the circulation desk, and ask for a library membership. With proof of Banff residency, the newcomer would get a library card -- for free.

On January 1st, 2000, Banff Public Library became the first library in Alberta to remove the membership fee for local residents -- thus reversing a trend toward a curious form of "privatizing" libraries that has swept Alberta in recent years. In Banff, the effect of eliminating the fee was immediate and dramatic. In January, three times as many new members joined the library as had joined the previous January.

The Banff library board initiated the no-fee policy, dubbed "Reaching Readers 2000" to ensure that everyone in the community who wanted to borrow books could have a library card of her own. The $10 annual fee that had deterred some low-income residents, or prompted, say, a whole household of young, seasonal workers to share one card, would no longer be a factor. News of the Banff initiative and of its dramatic results quickly rippled through the Alberta library community. Banff Public Library became the focus of a long-ignored issue in Alberta: how public is the public library?

In most of the world, public libraries are genuinely public. They are supported by some combination of the tax base of the municipality and other levels of government; local residents and ratepayers have free access to the library's services, including borrowing privileges at lending libraries.

In Alberta, too, libraries are largely funded through tax dollars, with more than 85 per cent of library board revenue coming from local and provincial governments. But Albertans aren't automatically entitled to borrow materials from the libraries that their tax dollars fund. Libraries in Alberta charge local ratepayers an annual fee of up to $20 for the privilege of a library card, a form of double taxation that disproportionately burdens lower-income families -- and which may exclude them altogether.

Defenders of a free public library argue it is not only unfair to charge individuals for access to a library funded by taxes, but unwise, if we want to encourage all members of society to be informed and literate. The municipal fire department doesn't require individuals to pay an annual registration fee, for the very good reason that towns and cities want the fire department to be available to every household in the community. Are public libraries not just as vital?

The UNESCO Public Library Manifesto of 1994 describes the public library as a cornerstone of democracy. "The public library, the local gateway to knowledge, provides a basic condition for lifelong learning, independent decision-making, and cultural development." Further, it asserts, "The public library shall in principle be free of charge."

The notion of a free public library is not particularly new or radical. In Canada, eight provinces and all three territories support the concept of libraries free to local residents. Two provinces -- B.C. and Saskatchewan -- specifically and unambiguously mandate that local residents must be allowed to borrow materials free of charge. Indeed, the original Alberta Public Libraries Act of 1907 clearly states, "All libraries and reading rooms established under this Act shall be open to the public free of all charges." Even the current Alberta Libraries Act appears to defend the public right to borrow free of charge.

So how is it that, in the year 2000, every major library in Alberta, with the exceptions of Banff and the Lloydminster public libraries (the latter governed by the Saskatchewan Public Libraries Act, 1996), charge an annual fee to borrowers?

Pat MacNamee, library consultant at Alberta Community Development, chooses her words carefully when describing the government position on fees. "Libraries are not permitted to charge a membership fee. All members of the public are library members, with free access to the five or six basic services that the Act mandates. But library boards are permitted, at their option, to charge for the issuance of a library card, for use in tracking borrowed materials."

Some libraries have been exercising that option for decades, interpreting it as licence to charge an annual fee. Banff Public Library, for example, opened its doors on December 14, 1949 and charged adults $1 and students 50 cents for an annual membership. When the library became an official public library under the Libraries Act in 1974, it continued to charge annual membership fees, labelled as such on its financial statement. By 1999, the annual fee for an adult had increased to $10.

Whether or not one calls it a membership fee, the annual charge for the privilege of borrowing books has now spread all across Alberta. Calgary Public Library began charging a "registration fee" in 1989, followed by Red Deer in 1991, Medicine Hat in 1992. Edmonton was the last major library board to resist levying a user fee on cardholders, but it too introduced an annual registration fee in 1994, following the Klein government's cuts to municipal budgets and to provincial library funding. Elsa Rice, then chair of the Edmonton Public Library Board recalls that "we regarded the move as inevitable: there was no avoiding it in the economic/political climate of that time."

Thus, the principle of universal entitlement to public library services gradually has been extinguished. In the 1990s, the flip side of the Alberta Advantage -- low tax rates, which offer a disproportionate benefit to high income earners -- was the Alberta Disadvantage -- double taxation through user fees for public services, costs that disproportionately burden lower-income families.

In 1999, looking toward millennium plans and the library's 50th anniversary celebrations, the Banff library board became aware that Alberta had become something of an anomaly in the world library community. On researching the issue of membership fees, they could find only one other place in North America where residents paid a fee to belong to their local library. In Quebec, about half the public libraries charge a membership fee, and half do not. There, the libraries that instituted a fee experienced significant drops in membership rates.

The Banff board decided to test the effect of the fee in the Banff community. In a bold, unfunded move, the board voted to "eliminate membership fees for the millennium." In 1999, membership fees made up 6.9 per cent of the library's operating revenue. The board looked to various sources to make up the shortfall, including Banff town council and the federal Millennium Project fund, but was prepared to fall back on its donation fund or capital reserves if necessary. The town council unanimously endorsed the initiative in principle in December 1999, but didn't fund the revenue shortfall.

The immediate effect of the Banff initiative -- a jump in new members -- was good news to the Banff board, and very interesting news to the rest of the province. At the annual Alberta library conference in April, front-line library staff from around the province remarked to the Banff representatives that patrons in their libraries were asking why their library couldn't eliminate membership fees.

In Edmonton, the Banff results spurred the library board to revisit the issue of registration fees. Past chair Don Carmichael put together an analysis of the effects of the registration fee based on pre- and post-fee library statistics. He found that the board had originally projected that the registration fee would generate an annual revenue of $1.4 million. In reality, the revenue was less than half that in the first year, and had fallen to $665,000 by 1999. Of even more concern to Carmichael was the question of public access. The library board had anticipated a temporary drop in borrowers, which was indeed borne out. The number of "transacting borrowers" (that is, patrons who borrowed materials) dropped by 13 per cent in the first year. Far from recovering in subsequent years, however, the number of borrowers dropped 22 per cent below pre-fee figures in the second year, and has remained between 20 and 22 per cent lower through 1999.

In April, the Edmonton library board committed itself to developing strategies to eliminate the registration fee by seeking offset funding, but for Carmichael this is not a matter for municipalities alone. "I find these results extremely worrisome. It's imperative that we look more carefully at these developments on a province-wide basis."

As uncomfortable as the admission is for library trustees trying to deal with tight budgets, all of the library staff to whom I have spoken recognize that fees act as a deterrent. "Our board just doubled the fee to $20 per adult," said one librarian in a northern Alberta community, "and there are families I just don't see anymore; I know they can't afford it." In July, the tiny community of Longview, in southern Alberta, followed Banff's lead and eliminated membership fees. Sylvia Binkley, the board chair, was delighted and surprised by the results. "We knew about Banff's experience, so we thought we'd try it. Almost immediately, membership shot up from 55 to 75! We're definitely going to try to continue to offer free memberships."

Strains on library and municipal budgets in 2000 do not extend to the province. For a mere 0.1 per cent of its anticipated $5.5-billion surplus for the year, Alberta could not only replace the revenue libraries currently raise through user fees, but could redress the underfunding that libraries have endured since 1994 because of provincial funding cut-backs and freezes.

Back in Banff, the library board is a little overwhelmed by the success of the program and the attention it has brought to the library. In August, the board made a presentation to the town council, sharing letters and e-mails of congratulation received from the library community across the country, articles in a variety of publications, notes from enthusiastic patrons, and a graph showing the steady climb of library membership, month by month -- up 27 per cent by the end of July.

"I'm proud of what the library is doing," says Banff mayor Dennis Shuler. "Given council's unanimous support of the initiative in principle, and considering this year's dramatic increase in library membership, I hope that council will approve the funds to replace the lost revenue from membership fees."

But libraries and the values they support -- literacy, lifelong learning, acquisition of information -- are not solely the responsibility of municipalities. It will require a clarification of legislation and a corresponding increase in provincial funding to ensure that every Albertan has what Banffites now have -- free access to the truly public library that their tax dollars support.