The acquisition and maintenance costs associated with library automation systems in Finnish public libraries

This paper reports the results from a survey of the costs and types of the library automation systems in use in public libraries in Finland. The study was carried out during 2000. The results show that almost all of the Finnish public libraries have some kind of library automation system and that 80 per cent of them are already offering services via the Internet. The costs of establishing public library automation have been approximately 16.8 million Euros with annual operating costs of about 5.7 million Euros, i.e. about 1.2 Euros for every Finnish citizen. The labour costs used in building and maintaining library automation systems had been poorly monitored in the libraries. Thus it is proposed that a model for a better cost‐effective analysis of library automation should be established for the Finnish public libraries.