Speaker at ILOC 2025: Libraries deliver measurable returns but also critical non‑monetary value

At a State Library of Iowa continuing-education session presented at the ILOC 2025 conference, Kevin Unwrapp, a consultant for library operations with the Vermont Department of Libraries, told trustees and staff that libraries should document their non‑monetary value as well as traditional cost‑benefit measures.

Unwrapp said monetary measures such as circulation counts and return‑on‑investment calculators are useful but incomplete. “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted,” he said, and later added, “libraries were green and were part of the sharing economy a hundred years before that was cool.”

Why it matters: Library budgets and capital campaigns increasingly require defenders to explain value in familiar budgetary terms. Unwrapp urged trustees to pair numbers with human stories so local funders and officials better understand how libraries serve as community living rooms, workforce supports, archives and sustainable resource hubs.

Unwrapp illustrated his talk with examples and data drawn from multiple places. He cited a circulation and digital‑use example from Idaho (physical circulation in the millions and nearly 3 million electronic checkouts in a recent reporting…