Branch Library Closings

Reporting (barely) live from the American Library Association conference in Anaheim:

Yesterday I was a very minor part of a panel discussion on public library branch closings. Christie Koontz, Dean Jue, and Wade Bishop from Florida State University reported on their study, "Public Library Facility Closure: An Investigation of Impacts on Library Customer Markets." (Full disclosure: the reason I was on the panel is that OCLC helped underwrite the research.)

The discussion was lively and covered a wide range of topics, but the important point is that this study begins to provide a framework for making conscious decisions about how to go about making decisions about moving or closing branch library services. Christie Koontz has been a leader (maybe THE leader) in encouraging libraries to use GIS data in the decision making process, and this paper extends that reputation.

The paper will be available after August 1 through WebJunction. We may even put together a message board and discussion around the paper and its findings.