– Phil Bradley’s comments I think reflect the belief that libraries are of value in every context of our lives; valuing them as such is near impossible, the evidence though is all around us in writing, quotations, etc. on the subject of books and literature from ancient times up to indeed Phil Bradley’s assertions.

-Tim Coates reminds the bones in terms of every day library management, putting “the books and journals that writers are writing and publishers are publishing onto their shelves”; issues and footfall have been used likewise on a day to day basis as about the only practical means of measuring the complex outcomes of the libraries [highly abstract, library staff will often point out the shortfall – e.g., a person may use the library only once in a while but find it of considerable value when they do].

– I’m not well read on libraries related research over the past half centuary (esp. that carried out in the 60s and 70s), but would it be fair to say this largely focuses on individual trees (the values Phil Bradley highlights) rather than attempting to map out the forest as a whole.

– More recently the new ONS ‘happiness’ (feeling of ‘well-being’) index could prove a truer approach to the problem of measuring the value of public libraries (e.g., ref. example in latter but one bullet point); which together with the latter ‘forest rather than trees’ bullet point, cvonstitutes at least 2 possible ways forward (in addition to putting any further research on ‘individual trees’ into a broader context).