Abstract
Public libraries have the mandate of promoting the knowledge enhancement and awareness building of local residents. The national and local economic development on the other hand could directly impact the governmental public investment to the libraries and therefore affects their ability to deliver sufficient services either directly or indirectly. To investigate this sort of impact, the research extracted data from the annual reports of Bibliotheca Alexandria about various library services, collections, and financial data. As for the data concerning the Egyptian economy, it has been extracted mainly from World Bank data. Using Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, results prove the existence of a strong relation between the country GDP and the allocated budget to the public libraries. Moreover, results show that there is a strong positive relation between the allocated budget to the libraries on one hand and the salaries & wages on the other hand, which explains how library staff and librarians are very likely to be affected by any budget reallocation, which is in turn affected by the economy development.
Highlights
The Public Library is the local center of information, making all kinds of knowledge and information readily available to its users
A study discussed the public library’s role in society as a focal point for local economic development, which promotes the idea of setting up an information service in public libraries to provide added value information; which will be of great importance in justifying the existence of the public library within its surroundings [6]
All of the other collection types such as the digital collection, electronic books, online databases, printed scholarly journals, daily newspapers, electronic journals, theses, specialized library’s collection, and depository library collection has been increased over time but in different ranges
Summary
The Public Library is the local center of information, making all kinds of knowledge and information readily available to its users. A study discussed the public library’s role in society as a focal point for local economic development, which promotes the idea of setting up an information service in public libraries to provide added value information; which will be of great importance in justifying the existence of the public library within its surroundings [6]. Results showed that the total direct economic impact of SC public libraries is estimated at $222 million, while the actual cost of these services to the state and local governments is only $77.5 million. This means that for every $1 spent by state and local governments on SC public libraries the return on investment is $2.86 [8]. In the second step, various library indicators are tested against the allocated budget such as the different library collection categories, membership, visitors, salaries & wages, and the general expenses as Figure 1 illustrates
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