Link to November 17 Philadelphia Inquirer article, "Do Phila libraries really add $10,000 to nearby home prices?
Excerpt: In an attempt to show the Philadelphia Free Library and its threatened $30 million+ city-funded budget (plus $10 million+ from the state) isn't just a good Ben Franklin civic ideal persisting into the age of instant Internet information access, but is also an economically justifiable use of state and local taxpayer dollars, a new study, done for the library by Penn's Fels Institute and Institute for Urban Research, claims the 54-branch city library system provides:
- $22 million worth of yearly literacy gains
- $6 million in yearly job-finding assistance (and $30 million in higher wages)
- $4 million in "business development" by business owners who used the library
If that's true, the libraries more than pay for themselves. But do they? "It's private value, not value to the city treasury," acknowledges David Thornburgh, Fels executive director. "What's a library do for people? It's not just a place we store books.... Learning to read is critically important. Finding a job, learning about a career... it's a resource that helps you grow a business. There's benefit to me, and to us."
To get those high values, the study says, for instance, that Philadelphians receive $99 in value every time a person who operates a business logs onto a Free Library computer, plus $10.52 for every book, movie or magazine a borrower checks out.
Fels isn't measuring the enjoyment a reader gets; it's trying to capture the economic value of these acts in terms of higher literacy and increased business skills.
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