One Year Later: Private Library Management in Riverside County, California

Staff -- School Library Journal, 7/1/1998

The company that took over managing the Riverside County (CA) Library System is so far getting good reviews from people in the sprawling county southeast of Los Angeles. Customers and government officials point to increased hours, more staff, and even a slight rise in the materials budget, which had been virtually nonexistent for the last several years.

The contract between Riverside County and LSSI -- Library Systems and Services, Inc. -- has drawn the attention of librarians nationwide, many of whom are concerned about the implications of a profit-seeking company running public libraries.

But in Riverside, there's general agreement that LSSI has met the goals laid out in its first contract, signed a year ago this month. "Everything we were told ahead of time was honest and above board and [happened] the way it was promised," said Barbara Bowie, a librarian who worked in the system before LSSI and now manages nine of its 23 libraries.

It's still too soon, however, to hold up Riverside County as proof that privatization works. The fact is that LSSI took over a library system so plagued with problems it had nowhere to go but up. With all its gains, Riverside's spending per capita remains among the lowest in the country, and even LSSI officials acknowledge they cannot make major improvements without more tax dollars, which, for the moment, are nowhere in sight.