Tartu Deputy Mayor Ulla Preeden and Tallinn Deputy Mayor Monika Haukanõmm approached Minister of Culture Heidy Purga.
They requested changes to the draft implementing act of the Public Library Act. This is necessary to treat municipalities equally.
Support for purchasing publications is calculated based on population size. In Tallinn and Tartu, the support is reduced by an additional coefficient.
As a result, residents of Tallinn and Tartu receive less state support per capita than, for example, in Viimsi, Saue, or Saku.
Preeden and Haukanõmm wrote that the public libraries in Tallinn and Tartu also serve residents of surrounding counties.
Additionally, Tallinn and Tartu are linguistically diverse cities. Public libraries must offer multilingual and multicultural collections.
This means that residents with different native languages can read in their own language.
Creating such collections requires more funding than in small municipalities with Estonian-language collections.
The draft states that the reduction in support took into account the share of other libraries.
Preeden and Haukanõmm said this argument is not justified.
They cited academic and university libraries as examples. These are intended to support research and education, not to provide fiction.
Moreover, university libraries are not open to all readers.
They also noted that public libraries often function as school libraries. Many schools only have textbook collections.
Therefore, fiction is borrowed from public libraries. Large cities have many schools and literature enthusiasts.
The deputy mayors emphasized the importance of the issue. The number of readers waiting for books is growing.
Kerttu Kaldoja, advisor at the Ministry of Culture, said discussions will continue in the fall.
The ministry aims to secure more funding for purchasing publications. This should increase the availability of books.
The deadlines for the Public Library Act amendment to take effect are January and July of next year.