An Economic Analysis of Library Benefits.

Libraries find it increasingly necessary to use their limited resources in the most efficient manner. This requires the use of decision rules which permit library resources to be directed to those activities which yield the highest returns. An effort is made to utilize part of welfare economics to suggest which groups of library users will provide the greatest return to society. An evaluation of the traditional library functions of education, information, and leisure suggests that libraries should direct their resources toward educational activities and not toward recreation when public monies are involved. A case can be made for subsidizing the library activities of school-age children, others explicitly involved in education, disadvantaged minority groups, and governmental officials and staff. Since public and school libraries produce and distribute essentially the same services, it is an uneconomic use of the communities' resources to maintain two separate institutions, one of which imposes costs on th...