DRYDEN – Some would say public libraries are invaluable.
But Caroline Goulding told Dryden councillors this week that one can put a dollar figure on what their city’s library does for the community.
Goulding, Dryden Public Library’s chief executive officer and chief librarian, made a presentation on the library’s “social return on investment” during council’s Aug. 26 meeting.
The library’s overall economic impact amounts to approximately $320 per resident and $4 for every dollar invested by the city, she told councillors.
Number crunching by the Algoma University-based NORDIK Institute helps to get across the importance of good public libraries, Goulding said in an interview Friday.
“It gives a really good sense of what is the value that the library offers the community in a way that’s not just anecdotes,” she said.
“And I think it also lets us really do a deep dive in our collections and services and figure out where our value-added areas are, where our areas of strength are, and maybe where we want to start adding more services so that we can offer more to the community.
“Because what a library is to its community or the role that it plays is a changing thing based on what the community needs are.”
Goulding’s presentation to council said social return on investment (SROI) is “a method of measuring the value of a service that goes beyond items in a traditional financial statement.”
SROI “places value on social, economic and environmental factors” and indicates “how much money is saved by community members because of the library,” she said in the presentation.
Mayor Jack Harrison said it’s useful to try and quantify what the library on Van Horne Avenue does for Dryden.
“I agree that it is providing value to our community,” he told Newswatch. “This is just a way to try to quantify it somehow.”
Harrison said “there's a lot of social value to having the library for folks to come take out books and learn and gain knowledge and wisdom – and having the library as just a safe place to be to take some quiet time."
He added that the library “has definitely provided value” in his own life.
