Guidelines for public library funding

The public library provides resources and services designed to meet the information, education, cultural and recreational needs of the community. As agreed by the library community at the Australian Libraries Summit in 1988, the primary responsibility of the public library should be to serve as the first point of access for information for the general public and for the public's access to the national system of library and information services.

ALIA recognises the need for all people to have this access to information to satisfy their personal needs and believes that public libraries have an obligation to provide basic public library services free of charge.

ALIA accepts the distinction made between basic and value-added services, and defines 'value-added' services as those which, through some action (or activity) on the part of the service providers, provide the user with an additional level or degree of benefit to that which is already available to them free-of-charge as the base level of service. The additional benefits will usually be in the form of either increased convenience or time saved for the user, or in the provision of a product which the user may retain for personal use. In all cases, the service providers' labour or capital, or some combination of the two, will have been added in order to provide the new level of benefit.

It is clear that what is classed as basic and what is classed as value-added will vary from service to service. ALIA maintains that for an individual and literate society to survive, a certain 'base' level of access to information must be available free of charge to all members of that society. Libraries should be funded from tax and rate revenue for the purpose of obtaining, organising and making readily available, information which may be in a variety of formats. The base level of service includes entrance to the library; provision of access to the collection and assistance with its use; and the loan of any item from the lending collection.

ALIA believes that individual service providers must ultimately determine what they will provide as a basic (without charge) level of service, and what constitutes a value-added service. In determining this, they should be guided by the distinction between what services they should be providing as a public good, or as a matter of social justice, to all people - because use of the service will result in long-term benefit to the entire community - and those services which are not essential to provide the same level of benefit to the community, but which will afford individuals greater ease of access, convenience, or private benefit and which are therefore chargeable as a commodity.

Developed by the former Australian Council of Library and Information Services and adopted by ACLIS National Council in June 1989.