Photo by Gary Tamin

A draft study has recommended adding a brand new library and spending least $37.27 million to make libraries in St. Mary’s County come close to national standards by 2025 and overcome noise and overcrowding, St. Mary’s Board of County Commissioners heard Tuesday morning.

As many as 570,000 visits to libraries each year puts St. Mary’s County far ahead of Calvert County, which recorded 490,387 visits, and Charles County, which logged 354,367 visits. The national average is 410,422 visits a year.

“Nationally adequate best practices for adequately sizing library facilities recommend one square foot of library space per capita, but St. Mary’s is providing 0.54 square feet of library space per capita,” Lauren Isenstein, principal consultant of Providence Associates LLC., told the commissioners. Isenstein gave a power-point presentation to the commissioners entitled “A Comprehensive and Integrated Library System Analysis.”

Isenstein said the square foot per capita indicates the libraries in the county were half the size of national standards.

Kathleen Reif, director of St. Mary’s County Libraries, said the most frequent complaint she receives is either the libraries are too noisy or the usage area is just too small. Reif said there were 66,000 library card owners and a sample survey showed 62 percent of the card-holders visit the library once or twice each week.

Barring a few exceptions, St. Mary’s County outperforms its peers in Southern Maryland, as the circulation of material per capita is 11.1 compared with 10.9 for Calvert and 6.0 for Charles County. The national average is 9.3.

In spite of heavy use, in 2005 St. Mary’s County spent significantly less dollars than the average national per capita  – both overall and on materials per capita. The overall per capita expenditure in St. Mary’s was $28.71 compared to the national average of $32.84. St. Mary’s County Libraries’ materials expenditure per capita was $2.82 while the national average was $4.09. Calvert County was ahead of St. Mary’s in both areas of spending, $31.23 per capita overall and $3.64 per capita for materials. The spending in Charles County was, however, less than St. Mary’s.

Isenstein said Providence recommends adding 73,019 square feet of library space over the next 10 years to meet the needs of a burgeoning population. She said over the long-term – three to ten years – the estimated costs for maintenance and on-going repairs/replacements for current infrastructure is estimated to be $520,000 – $215,000 for Leonardtown and $305,500 for Charlotte Hall.

Reif said library visits have jumped 100 % since 2001.

Commissioner Dan Raley (D. Great Mills) asked Reif if all that had been done over the past five years was not enough. Reif replied, as her philosophy is one of optimistic realism, she has to point out much ground has yet to be covered.

Reif thanked Gary Whipple of the Public Works and Transportation Department and Jeff Jackman, senior planer at the Land Use and Growth Management Department, for helping with the needs assessments study.

To meet the projected need of 141,949 population in year 2026, an addition of a new building with 30,174 square feet in California/Hollywood/Lexington Park needs to be added; Leonardtown needs an all-new library that would have approximat