Nonresidents face Central Arkansas Library System fee

$54 annual fee to help defray costs

FILE — Barbara Brockinton looks for a book Friday Dec. 13, 2019 during a visit to the Central Arkansas Library System Amy Sanders Library in Sherwood.  (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STATON BREIDENTHAL)
FILE — Barbara Brockinton looks for a book Friday Dec. 13, 2019 during a visit to the Central Arkansas Library System Amy Sanders Library in Sherwood. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STATON BREIDENTHAL)

The Central Arkansas Library System will no longer allow patrons who live outside the system's service area to access library materials for free.

The new policy goes into effect March 1. Nonresident library system cardholders will have access until Sept. 1, but after that new library card applicants who live outside the system's tax base will have to pay $54 annually.

The Central Arkansas Library System is funded by property taxes from Perry and Pulaski counties, excluding North Little Rock, because that city has its own library system. Library officials said the change is intended to balance the growing costs of an increasingly digital collection and to make things fair for those who pay to support the library system.

"Most people think libraries are free, and they're not," Nathan James, deputy executive director of technology and collection innovation for the library system, said Monday. "They are supported by taxes, and materials do cost. That's just the reality of it."

The Central Arkansas Library System is the largest public library system in Arkansas, serving 150,839 cardholders.

James said the library currently has nearly 15,000 nonresident cardholders. The new policy, which the library's board of trustees approved in January, will chiefly affect North Little Rock residents, he said. There are 8,727 North Little Rock residents who have Central Arkansas Library System cards, and 4,583 cardholders who live in what the library calls "CALS-area employment," which includes communities in Saline and Lonoke counties.

James said the $54 figure is about the average amount people in Pulaski and Perry counties pay in property taxes.

"All we're asking them to do is pay the equivalent of what our taxpayers pay on average, and then they will have exactly the same privileges as someone who actually lives here," James said.

Library system Executive Director Nate Coulter said the system has been "wrestling with this issue for quite some time" as the amount of ebooks and audiobooks that make up the library's circulation has risen.

"It's part and parcel of the escalating costs of providing digital content to our users," Coulter said in an email.

Those digital materials now comprise about one-third of the library system's circulation, he said, while print circulation is declining.

"The cost of making the library system collection available to people who live outside the scope of our service area and taxing jurisdiction has become unsustainable," Coulter said.

About 15% of the library's digital collection is being used by people outside the service area, and about 10% of the print collection is being used by those nonresidents, James said.

News of the library system's policy change was a source of frustration Monday during a William F. Laman Library System board meeting in North Little Rock. In the past, board members said, library systems spoke about coming together as regional organizations.

William F. Laman Library System Executive Director Crystal Gates said the North Little Rock system has no intention of going to guest cards and will continue to honor all library cards no matter where a patron resides.

"Personally, for me, that idea is completely against the mission of the public library," Gates said at the meeting. "We will continue to issue Laman cards to all in Pulaski County."

Gates added that the way the Laman Library System sets up its library card system makes it too difficult to differentiate between North Little Rock patrons and everyone else.

"I know in Little Rock they had a separate section for North Little Rock residents allowing them to differentiate, but for us it was just Laman library cards in one group," she said.

The change also means the end to the reciprocal borrowing agreement the North Little Rock library system has had with the Central Arkansas Library System for more than 20 years, Gates said

"One of the best methods to ensure equity of access to our citizens is to partner with other libraries and cultural and learning institutions," Gates said.

Gates said a key component of many libraries is interlibrary loan programs. An interlibrary loan is when one library loans a resource to another library for use by that library's patrons, generally at no additional charge.

"One of my personal commitments as a public librarian is to encourage partnerships, which is why I worked so hard to get our Library Development District active again, and we even went a step further and invited academic libraries to join us," Gates said. "Limiting access to outside patrons while continuing to borrow from other libraries seems diametrically opposed, both to each other and to the philosophy of a public library.

"Laman is fully committed to partnerships that provide better access to our patrons and better access to other libraries' patrons."

James said the Central Arkansas Library System announced the change to neighboring libraries Monday. He also said library officials were briefing staff members who were likely to receive questions, and complaints, from patrons. He said he would encourage people to support libraries in their own communities, but also noted that the Central Arkansas Library System's collection is much larger than the surrounding libraries.

"There's definitely a value to continuing to use CALS and paying that fee," he said. "I mean, if you run the numbers, it's cheaper than a year of Netflix or cheaper than a year of Audible.com. It's really a great value considering how much you pay and what you get, and the same holds true for our taxpayers, frankly."

A Section on 02/11/2020

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