Your Hometown Library — A Great Return on Investment!

by Luren Dickinson, Beaumont Library District Director

Libraries have intrinsic value as places for lifelong learning.

But can you put a "price tag" on everything your hometown library offers? It turns out you can!

A new slide show produced by Beaumont Library District offers a formula for calculating a library’s value to users and the community.

“When it comes to putting a value on a library, in terms of dollars and cents, it’s always been difficult — until now,” says Library Board President Cynthia Carr.

The value of a hometown library

You can view the slide show below or on the Library’s website at www.bld.lib.ca.us and you'll quickly see the Library's value to the residents of Beaumont and Cherry Valley!

Running at about one-minute, the narrated slide show “Beaumont Library is Priceless!” discusses the “return on investment” calculator that is linked on the Library's website. It features a formula that calculates the value of the services we use when visiting the Library.

The ROI calculator can be accessed from the Library website, or by going directly to this page: www.ilovelibraries.org/what-libraries-do/calculator#

All you have to do is put in a few figures and up pops the return on investment number! What it shows is that the people of the community gets a big financial boost from using their hometown library.

When you crunch the numbers, free services to everyone and operating costs of a little over a million dollars a year, it turns out the Library enjoys a hefty return on investment. More than two dollars, in fact, for every dollar spent by the Library!

And so that’s why we say, Beaumont Library is “priceless!”

Beaumont Library, a California Special District independent of both city and county government, provides library services to Beaumont and Cherry Valley and is located at 125 E. Eighth Street in Beaumont. Visit bld.lib.ca.us for more information.