Study Group Report

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

As the Jesup Memorial Library prepares for the construction of its long-awaited new wing, we gathered a small group of Bar Harbor residents to study its operations, staffing, and budget, and to suggest ways to assure the financial sustainability of our community library.

We compared the Jesup to other libraries with a similar range of services and staff size, both in Maine and out-of-state. Of Maine’s 255 public libraries, 142 are private nonprofits and 113 are municipal (town departments). We looked at comparable communities to determine both the percentage of a library’s annual operations that is supported by its municipality and the percentage of a town’s annual budget that is appropriated to support its library.

Across the state, similarly sized non-profit libraries receive 62% of their operational expenses through municipal support. In 2022-23, the Jesup received 38% of its funding from the Town of Bar Harbor. The study also found that the average percentage of a town’s budget devoted to its library was 2.8%. In 2023, Bar Harbor appropriated an equivalent of 1.9% of its budget to the Jesup.

The study revealed that the Jesup’s municipal funding is among the lowest in the state. Without increases in its operating revenue, the library will have difficulty sustaining current levels of library service. The study suggests that, for the Jesup to be sustainable over time, it must continue to strengthen each of the three main planks in its financial foundation:

The amount the Jesup raises each year from donations
The Jesup’s financial reserves, the income from which can support annual operations
Municipal support that brings us closer to the state averages

The Jesup has made significant progress over the past 10 years with two of those planks. It has increased annual fundraising from $61K in 2013 to a target of $274K in 2023. Municipal support has followed a similar trend from $17,867 in 2013 to $280,000 in 2023. During this period of growth, the Library has relied on fundraising roughly ⅓ of operating expenses from the public, ⅓ from reserve and endowment funds, and ⅓ from the town of Bar Harbor.

Going forward, however, the Jesup Board anticipates that balance shifting closer in alignment to statewide trends: seeking half of the Jesup’s operating revenue from municipal support and half from private fundraising and endowment funds. This is more consistent with (though still below) municipal support provided to similarly sized libraries in Maine (both municipal and nonprofit). The need for this shift is primarily a function of the increased cost of operating a public library, plus the growing cost of living in Bar Harbor. It is not, as some might suppose, due to an increase in the size of the library; we anticipate operating the expanded Jesup will only require an additional 1.25 staff positions above current levels.

Over the last decade, the Jesup Memorial Library has emerged as a vital component of our community’s infrastructure that attends to our town’s broad social, cultural, economic, educational, and wellness needs. Its staff of 7.8 full-time employees supports 41 open hours per week and a collection of more than 37,000 items, free access to computers, printers, and Wi-Fi, and hundreds of programs and events annually. Thousands of Bar Harbor residents depend on the library and tens of thousands of visitors use its services each year. The depth and breadth of demand for the library’s services has increased and construction has begun on a major expansion, slated to open in 2025. This report anticipates continued discussion by leadership of the Jesup and members of our community, leading to effective strategies that secure financial sustainability of our library for the foreseeable future.