Consultants were hired; a report submitted. Apparently, the Chattanooga-Hamilton County library system needs work. The Times-Free Press reports:

The Chattanooga libraries spend about $2.04 per capita on materials, almost $2 less than most other libraries in the benchmark group. The money the library does spend is overwhelmingly used for books and periodicals for adults — 88.5 percent — which the consultants called a poor allocation of resources because almost 35 percent of materials checked out are for children and teens.

Many materials in the library are rarely used, such as federal documents, which are largely available online but take up nearly an entire floor of the downtown library, the consultants said.

At one library branch, Ms. Kent said she found a college guide from 1998, something that should have been discarded years ago.

“They kept it because they didn’t have the money to replace it and figured something was better than nothing,” she said. “There are a lot of instances when nothing is better than something.”

The report says visits to the library are down, but an earlier article claimed they were up, in part due to job seekers using the Internet. Note this beautiful sentence from the library director (I believe this was spoken, not written, so maybe the verbage is understandable). “Our library circulation has gone up at 4 days a week at the branches over what it was when it was 5 days a week in the branches and the book budget is lower than it was in 1985.”

Honestly, I don’t know what to think about this. I know the system needs improvements, but I don’t like hearing complaints about ugly public buildings. I fear it means raising taxes, and I’m fairly suspicious of that at the moment. I want to hear wisdom and restraint from my government leaders at every level. If we need fund-raisers for the library, great.