ATHABASCA – The Alice B. Donahue Library and Archives is unobtrusive, tucked into the shadow of the Old Brick School building, but according to a report from the regional library board it belongs to, the small building is providing locals from the town and county over $1.1 million in savings a year.
Town of Athabasca councillors heard from James MacDonald, executive director of Northern Lights Library Systems (NLLS) during their Feb. 6 meeting. MacDonald, who visits the council each year, brought the newest numbers from the library’s 2023 year.
“The library system is still going strong, the libraries are strong, and they’re bringing a lot of value into communities like yours for sure,” said MacDonald.
NLLS calculates the savings based on the total value of a library’s yearly circulation; as MacDonald puts it, if Athabascans were to go out and buy all the books in their library, it would cost them $1.17 million. Through the system’s partnership with The Regional Automation Consortium (TRAC), anyone with an Athabasca library card can access over three million titles, in both physical and online books. NLLS has 49 libraries under its wing and is partnered with the six other regional systems across the province.
“I don’t know of any other cooperative like that, where you have that level of service,” said MacDonald. “We have those seven regional systems, and the cooperation from libraries is pretty impressive.”
As part of an agreement with the provinces, municipalities pay a small levy on a per-resident basis that helps fund the library. Athabasca’s levy was just under $16,000, meaning each resident is paying $5.39 per year.
“Hopefully you aren’t spending a bunch of money on Audible or something ridiculous like that,” said MacDonald, drawing a round of laughter from the table. “(Books) come here by van, electronically, or on your devices if you have the apps.”
MacDonald said the town gets slightly more bang for its buck thanks to Athabasca County and some of the surrounding summer villages, who have all joined NLLS. The overall book allotment — how much the library can spend on new titles — was just under $16,000, which was good enough to purchase 1,005 new items.
“Your summer villages get a grant from the province as well, since they don’t have libraries of their own, so your library is getting back in cash more than you’re paying in your levy,” said MacDonald.
Inflationary woes
High inflation rates have hit the library system hard, like many other businesses in the province. While NLLS has been doing its best to cut costs — MacDonald said they’ve gone from 26 employees to 19 as they look for ways to increase efficiency, often through outsourcing — their provincial funding hasn’t increased since 2015.
“We’re doing well. We’re still plying through our reserves, we had built some reserves up and we’re using them for operations. We have a plan to get us into the black for the next four years,” said MacDonald, who cited the pandemic and some staff departures as the reason for the fund build-up.
NLLS gets funding from three different areas: the municipal levy, which the board votes on every year, the local library board’s levy rate, and a provincial operating grant. The provincial grant is $4.75 per person, which trail behind the two levy rates.
Macdonald said the government moved from 2016 census numbers to 2019 census numbers in 2023, which helped, and they increased the grant by five cents per person in the same year.
“What we’re hoping for the province to do, we don’t have a number for them, but we’re asking instead of these long periods of time, can we have some sort of set inflationary number,” said Macdonald during a Feb. 7 follow-up. “We’re hoping to spend less time asking for money and more time working on library stuff.”
