LIBRARY EXPERTS

SAN JUAN — Supporters say it helps public libraries better serve their communities. Opponents say it’s contradictory to the very values libraries uphold. Now “it” — and the resulting controversy — has come to the Rio Grande Valley.

Since May, Germantown, Md.-based Library Systems & Services, a private, for-profit company, has been running the San Juan Public Library. The arrangement follows the city’s approval earlier this year of a measure to outsource library management.

The company is the first to admit that “it’s an unusual situation” to have a business running a library, but its representatives said the 50 public libraries using LSSI benefit enormously from the arrangement.

That’s because LSSI saves cities money by buying and cataloging books in bulk and centralizing some library functions such as labeling books and making long-range plans, said Steve Coffman, LSSI’s vice president for East Coast public libraries.

“You can have a few good people and stretch them over the facilities,” he said.

The overall cost savings are so great, Coffman said, that a city using LSSI still saves money on its library budget — even with LSSI getting its cut. Cities essentially turn their library budgets over to LSSI, which then handles them, and LSSI keeps the difference between what is budgeted and what is spent. San Juan plans to hand LSSI $231,900 to manage the library next fiscal year.

With annual revenue of $26 million and 650 employees, “we should be able to be of more help than just one little director operating all by themselves,” Coffman explained.

But controversy often follows LSSI. When trustees of Tennessee’s Jackson-Madison County Library board signed a deal with the company in 2006, a local citizens group claimed it gathered 2,000 signatures in opposition to the move, according to an article from the American Library Association.

In Fargo, N.D., the library board dropped its contract with LSSI in 2003 after growing frustrated with the company’s failure to pay bills on time, according to the ALA. And in Bedford, Texas, which is considering a contract with LSSI to manage library personnel, most of the library board opposes the deal.

“Groups banning together (have) lower costs, but what are they giving up? A sense of local control,” said Loriene Roy, president of the ALA. “The homogeneity of libraries is not something that we’re comfortable with.”

Roy said ALA does not view LSSI as a bad company but simply feels library outsourcing is “really against the grain of what libraries hold dear. … The national philosophy is that we don’t like it.”

“We want to make sure patrons come first,” Roy said. “In the for-profit sector, the impression is the profit comes first.”

Coffman said in the first year of its contract with San Juan, which runs through September 2012, LSSI probably won’t even turn a profit. He added that a strong profit margin on a library for LSSI is about 10 percent. And Coffman is quick to point out that when setting library policies, the local governments “always have final say-so.”

“It is not Germantown, Md., dictating how things ought to be in San Juan,” Coffman said.

Bonnie Finn, a member of the Bedford library board, said she opposed the deal after seeing a dearth of new materials and employees at other LSSI libraries she visited. She said she also has concerns that LSSI could profit by cutting personnel and reducing wages and benefits.

Coffman said LSSI usually retains the existing library personnel, and in San Juan, LSSI actually plans on adding an extra employee to the four-person library staff. Library employees are being paid exactly the same amount they were getting prior to the change, and they have full benefits as well, he said.

LSSI does have its supporters. Laura Soto, who has worked at the San Juan Public Library for six years but is now technically an LSSI employee, said the company helped the library set up a storage space for the books it doesn’t have room for. And under LSSI, library hours have increased, she said.

The city of Moorpark, Calif., contracted with LSSI after its library broke off from the county system. Under LSSI, which has run Moorpark’s library since January, there are longer hours, a better collection, more programming and more attendance, said Mary Lindley, the director of parks, recreation and community services in Moorpark.

“They like books and like libraries and want to see it succeed,” Lindley said.

San Juan Mayor San Juanita Sanchez said she hopes LSSI can help San Juan figure out how to fund a new library, as was the case in Lancaster, Texas, which moved from a 5,000-square-foot library to a 25,000-square-foot facility under LSSI while maintaining almost the same budget. The current San Juan library is little more than an oversized trailer.

“What stood out for me was they’re experts at libraries,” Sanchez said. “They do nothing but run libraries efficiently and effectively.”

But San Juan City Commissioner Pedro Contreras said the city was given the impression that if it contracted with LSSI, “they were going to come in, and in a miracle just give us a new building” — an argument he doesn’t buy.

He also thinks the city is getting ahead of itself by contracting with LSSI before it even has a new library facility.

“We don’t need more books,” said Contreras, adding that the library already has more materials than it can hold. “We don’t need more memberships. We don’t need more employees. We need a building — that’s what we need.”

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Ryan Holeywell covers PSJA and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4446. For this and more local stories, visit www.themonitor.com.