The American outsourcer Library Systems & Services has made a reputation for fixing broken libraries.

Whether that entails jumping in to help the Toronto Public Library meet the challenge to “rationalize the footprint of libraries to reduce service levels, closing some branches” to save up $13.3 million – as outlined Thursday at City Hall – is an open question.

But even librarians admit, in a survey published last week by American Libraries magazine, that privatizing libraries is likely to mean they run more cheaply and efficiently.

Keeping library management in the public sector, however, means a stronger community connection, more qualified staff and better quality, the survey found.

The debate, passionate in the U.S. in the last few years and now stirring in Britain, is about to hit Canada’s largest public library system.

LSSI – a U.S. company that has a monopoly on full-scale private library management – already runs the libraries in 16 U.S. communities.

A recent contract offer to San Joaquin County in California promised up to 47 per cent longer hours, 21 to 34 per cent lower costs, and $800,000 more spending on books and materials.

San Joaquin turned them down.

In Riverside, Calif., the first and still biggest library system run by LSSI, the verdict is better.

“Circulation, library visits, and library programs all continue to increase,” the 33-branch system reported. Still, Riverside’s own audit in 2002 declared a profit of only $80,000 or 1.02 per cent.

“There is no evidence that outsourcing of the public library operations has saved any of the communities involved any money,” the Dartmouth, Mass., privatization study group weighing an LSSI contract reported in 2008.

LSSI’s value, Dartmouth said, was fixing small systems with “multiple problem issues that cannot be solved in-house and need immediate action.”

Indeed, the Library Journal reported Riverside functions better with LSSI but remains a poor system because it is underfunded by the county.

Public outcry also vetoed an LSSI deal in Bedford, Texas, and overturned contracts in Fargo, N.D., and Jersey City, N.J., after it used a “heavy-duty team” to improve a “horribly managed” system.

“Libraries are one of the last public spaces. You have this diverse mix of humanity coming through the door,” said Dr. Heather Hill of the University of Western Ontario, explaining the public passion for keeping libraries public.

Her dissertation on public versus private library systems is one of the few analyses of the relatively new phenomenon.

“In most of the situations except for one, the person managing the contract doesn’t seem to have knowledge of the library, which seems problematic to me,” she said.

As does the fact that LSSI has no competition.

Contracts spelling out every single detail — not just, for example, a pledge to “maintain reference services” — for every single branch are vital to making a private deal work, said Hill.

“The efficiency question is huge, and the effectiveness. A contract has to be looking at both. Do they actually save a community money? That’s unclear. What role do the outsourced libraries play in their communities? That is different from branch to branch.”

The 99-branch Toronto Public Library, which calls itself the busiest in the world, would be three times larger than any other LSSI contract.

“We’re obviously watching the situation in Toronto,” said LSSI’s King, hired as CEO in April and whose previous job was running North American operations for Serco Group, an international outsourcing firm.

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“A lot of the things going on there fit the profile of why a system would come to LSSI.”

The first task, he admitted, would be “winning the hearts and minds of the staff.”

King listed LSSI’s methods for the Star: not closing branches, rehiring most library workers as LSSI employees, offering standard private-company benefits and pensions, reallocating resources to allow for longer hours, and centralizing collection management, human resources, payroll and accounting.

“We would insist that we have complete control of the collection development,” King said. “That is the most important thing for the public and we are really good at it.”

How do they make money? “Eliminate a lot of nonvalue added overhead, typically in the back office or the head office.”

Lower salaries, paraprofessionals instead of librarians with master’s degrees, reduced benefits and a heavy reliance on volunteers for work and for fundraising is the consensus in a series of community reports.

Also, “books that aren’t being circulated are replaced with books that are being circulated.”

Since amalgamation, the Toronto Public Library has outsourced its paperback acquisitions, Library Workers Union Local 4948 president Maureen O’Reilly said.

On top of that, “half of the workers in the library are part-time and do not have benefits,” she said.

“We’re already contributing to cost savings.”

The library’s 2011 operating budget pared down increases to 2 per cent by eliminating 11 full-time jobs, closing the Urban Affairs Library at Metro Hall, and cutting some hours.

The union has collected 10,000 signatures on its petition to spare the library system from City Hall’s cost-cutting campaign. LSSI is one of the outcomes it fears.

“Closing libraries can happen anywhere in times of fiscal distress,” said UWO’s Hill. “I don’t know if that can be avoided anywhere.”

Is LSSI a solution? “We don’t know yet. The idea makes me uneasy.”