Libraries are one the most beloved things america really got right. Such a great value and use of tax money.
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In San Francisco, the annual library budget is ~$200,000,000. That's about $10/month for each San Francisco resident (including babies, elderly people etc.).
Incredible value for money then.
It might not seem like a lot, but it is a lot when you consider that most residents don't use the library at all, and that adult book collections aren't great.
850,000 people have to share just 2 copies of Thompson's Calculus Made Easy. (I didn't cherry pick this: I looked up at my bookshelf and picked the first book I saw.)
Very little of the money is spent on books. Only 15% of the money is spent on 'collections', and much of that is spent on things other than books.
SF libraries are nice for children (lots of copies of kids' books, lots of desks to do homework when waiting for parents to get back from work).
But I personally don't find them a convenient source for reading material as, if I want a particular book, they usually don't have it.
SFPL's own stats say they see over 10,000 visitors per day and check out over 12 million items annually. Let's say you allocate 50% ($100M) to each of those two missions: serving as a community space vs. lending materials.
That gives you:
- As a community space: $100M ÷ (10,000 visitors × 365 days) = ~$27 per visit. You could hand every person who walks in a $27 gift card to a coffee shop with free Wi-Fi and they'd arguably get a comparable experience for many use cases.
- As a lending library: $100M ÷ 12,000,000 checkouts = ~$8.30 per checkout. You could just buy most paperbacks and many e-books for that price and give them away.
I misunderstood and thought it was $10/year. SF clearly has a spending problem. Maybe it's to do with the high cost of living.
Follow-up to my other comment. I read through the library's annual report, found here. https://sfpl.org/sites/default/files/archive/2025-12/2024_25...
Libraries do more than lend books and provide community spaces. They also run a lot of programs. So just saying "hand everyone a Starbucks gift card and a paperback every month" doesn't cover everything.
There are worse ways for a city to spend money. SF has a spending problem. Both can be true.
"There are worse ways for a city to spend money."
Yes, San Francisco does all of those, too.
Yep, you also get a quota of 10 suggested purchases for their collection every month - I scour for new books to max mine out and they grant >95% of what I ask for
I've only suggested a purchase a couple of times. I've never heard back, so I assumed whatever I submitted was being ignored.
If you click your username at top right corner and then the bell (which will have a number if there are notifications) you can find out what happened with those requests
I don't see any notifications. When I go to https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/suggested_purchases I see only:
Showing 0 suggestions.
10 of 10 suggestions left
Hmm if you'd submitted them in past it's strange to see 0 count. I see all of mine there. https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/user_profile/me/notification_... shows:
> Your suggestion has been approved!
The library will acquire the following Book: <title>. To learn more and manage your requests, go to Suggested Purchases.
Sorry, too late to edit. You probably spotted that I should have written $20/month, not $10/month.
Some of the services end up being very expensive, like ebook lending. Some publishers basically charge libraries per loan ($X for an ebook that lasts Y loans), so while it is nice for residents it's not clear that it's a good value, or that it's a good use of tax money.
I once heard from a knowledgeable source that most of library lending is bodice rippers. These are available from Amazon/etc. pretty cheaply, which undercuts the value argument. And of course, there's practically no social value of providing the public with free bodice rippers...
I'd be interested to know more about the economics of lending DVDs and Blu-rays. Hopefully libraries get a better deal on these.
> And of course, there's practically no social value of providing the public with free bodice rippers...
Why not?
> Some of the services end up being very expensive, like ebook lending
We need something like a first-sale doctrine for electronic media. Blockchains would be ideal for tracking ownership.
If most of lending were made up of educational texts, there would be a social value. Some people describe bodice rippers as porn for women, and people get addicted to them in the same way they get addicted to porn.
Would a library ever lend porn out? I'm guessing no, because of the lack of social value. To the extent that bodice rippers are like porn, the same rationale would apply.
And to the extent that those are two different things, your argument completely falls apart.
Nope, because even if bodice rippers are not pure porn, it's not clear why libraries should subsidize entertainment for patrons. I'm not saying it's a terrible use of taxpayer money, just disagreeing with OP who said it's "such a great use of tax money". It does not bring people together, educate them, or provide for the common defense. Why not have movie theaters be government-run? It would make as much sense as providing free smut-adjacent books for (almost entirely) women.
If everyone used the library as much as people say they are great, their shelves would be empty. Libraries have to be some of the most underutilized services.
When it comes to recent popular movies, the wait times can be over 6 months. I'm usually number 480 on the waitlist or something.
I wouldn't call that underutilized. :-)
In my experience, there can be pretty high contention for certain items, so you need to be on the ball or make use of the "place hold" feature judiciously. Yeah, people are using the service.
Sadly, libraries in UK towns have very little shelf space left and what's on them is usually mass-market fiction, biography or very old non-fiction.
Honestly isn't worth the effort to visit my local one, unless I want to join a crochet club or do 'mindfulness' jigsaws.
In the US, libraries are often part of a network, and we have access to all the materials in the network. So if my local library doesn't have it, I simply request it from another library. They ship it to mine and I pick it up (and return to mine).
Then we also have a larger inter-library loan, where I can request things from libraries far, far away (even in another state). It takes much longer, though, and if it is deemed a popular/useful item, my local library may decide to purchase it and give that one to me rather than use ILL.
You may want to check if your local library has something similar.