editorials

The promise is only eight months old: The merger of the Minneapolis and Hennepin County library systems would not diminish access to library services.

Perhaps the officials who are considering the elimination of the Readmobile service next year are betting that, because the majority of its users are preschool children, that promise didn't register.

But the adults who serve on the Hennepin County Board and are entrusted with the libraries' stewardship have to see that mothballing the Readmobiles would amount to a breach of their promise -- one whose fallout would rain hardest on the county's littlest library patrons, who are just learning to read.

That ought to be reason enough to scuttle the notion of permanently parking the county's two Children's Readmobiles next year, despite a $2.5 million projected 2009 shortfall in the libraries' budget.

But for good measure, we'll toss in an appeal to county officials' sense of history. The two Readmobiles are the remnants of the rural bookmobile service that legendary Minneapolis library director Gratia Countryman established after World War I. That service spawned libraries that became the Hennepin County system.

Only this year, in the face of chronic financial duress in city libraries, did the founding system and her offspring reunite. It would be sadly ironic if one of the first moves by the merged system would be the elimination of the library on wheels.

What's increasingly clear is that while the merger is saving money -- an estimated $1.3 million this year -- Hennepin libraries are not out of the fiscal woods. One-time merger-related costs are running higher than expected -- and for that, administrators must shoulder responsibility.

But the bigger problem next year and beyond is the same one confronting many labor-intensive enterprises, public and private: health care and energy costs are rising faster than revenues. The challenge for library leadership is to manage those cost pressures in a way that preserves public confidence. Only then can the libraries attract both the private donations and the tax support needed to underwrite high-quality services over the long haul.

Killing the Readmobile program would do nothing to enhance public trust in Hennepin's libraries and their leaders. The reaction likely would be quite the opposite.