One of my goals in trying to not buy a book for an entire year was to save some money. You can tally the retail value of the books you borrowed rather than bought, but rarely do you pay full retail price for a book. Stores often have sales, run online discounts, or if you're like me you get to know you're used bookstores.
Another option that I like is the Denver Public Library's "Library Value Calculator" which asks the simple question, "For every $1.00 in taxes you spend on the Denver Public Library, how much do you receive in return?"
The calculator has you fill in the number of items or services you use per month from the library and it tallies a total.
Based on my four books and ILL item my personal Return On Investment according to the calculator is...
$20.44 "For every $1.00 in taxes you spend on your library, you receive $20.44 of value in return*"
There is also a Value of Service calculator which reports my 4 checked out books carry with them a combined value of $60.00 and my ILL of $25.00 for a combined $85.00
I am working on my own tabulation of monthly savings based on some of the possibilities I mentioned above. At the end of the month I hope to have my own set of numbers to compare with those tabulated by the calculator.
In library school we were asked infinite times on how we would best to promote our library once we got out into the real world. It struck me yesterday, as I checked out some items that DPL should find a way to include these values on each library check out receipt. It couldn't hurt to remind people of a positive return on their tax dollars.
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