What Can Be Done?

This is our goal for Lane County as well. But because our county has a 100-year history of independent, local libraries, the simplest and most cost-effective solution to Lane County's problem may not be not politically realistic: to merge all the libraries into a single county-wide library district. Instead the Lane Library League is studying ways to expand the existing library districts, create new districts, and build volunteer libraries.

At the same time we are encouraging the existing libraries to work more closely together. In Washington County, for example, a consortium of independent, local libraries provides service to everyone in the county. A single library card accesses every library in the consortium. A daily courier service makes it easy to order any book in the county and to have it delivered to a local library the next day. A consortium of this sort in Lane County would allow local funding and control of each library while providing the advantages of county-wide service.

One hurdle that stands in the way of county-wide service is the Eugene-Springfield Metro Plan, which erroneously labels libraries as an "urban service," and as a result decrees that people in the greater Eugene-Springfield area can become part of a library service area only by annexing their properties to the cities of Eugene or Springfield. Of course libraries are not an urban service -- Lane County alone has three largely rural library districts. It is also obvious that many suburban areas will not annex to Eugene or Springfield for decades, if ever. Nonetheless, local politicans seem reluctant to change the archaic Metro Plan, effectively denying library service to 40,000 people on the fringes of Eugene and Springfield. State representative Paul Holvey, with support from the Lane Library League, led State legislators in nearly passing a bill in 2005 to correct the Metro Plan. The bill is likely to be reintroduced and passed in 2007.