Cape Ann's best deal: 400,000 books, movies and more for about $62 a person

The short version:

• The internet did not replace the library. Much of the reading people do online comes from the library. Cape Ann library cards were used for more than 105,000 e-book, audiobook and video loans last year.
• A library cannot simply become a website. Publishers often rent e-books to libraries at several times the price you pay, and the licenses run out. In 2024, a federal court ruled against an online library that scanned and lent books without permission.
• About 1 in 11 Gloucester homes has no internet subscription. A digital-only library would leave them out.
• Libraries are turning into something new: podcast studios, teen rooms, tech help, tools to borrow and social workers. Gloucester's rebuilt Sawyer Free Library shows it. A year after it reopened, foot traffic and borrowing were up about 30%, its director reported.
• The four towns spend about $62 a person a year on their libraries. Last year those libraries lent 401,857 books, e-books, movies and other items. In Gloucester, the library gets less than 1 cent of each dollar in the city's general fund.
• This story starts a weekly series. We begin with Gloucester's Sawyer Free Library. Rockport, Essex and Manchester-by-the-Sea follow on the next three Saturdays. See the schedule.

A fair question

On Oct. 5 we wrote about Gloucester's $179 million city budget. The story said the Sawyer Free Library gets $1.4 million. Under our Facebook post, a reader asked: With the internet, why do we still have libraries?

It is a fair question. Any line in a budget should be able to explain itself. Many of us read on a phone now. Search engines answer questions in a second. So why not close the buildings and turn the library into a website?

We took that question seriously. We read a year of state records for Cape Ann's four libraries, court rulings, e-book price lists, research studies and the minutes of the Sawyer Free Library's board. Here is what we found.

Why can't the library just be a website?

This is the heart of the question. It sounds simple: put the books online, close the buildings, save the money. It does not work, for five reasons.

1. Libraries do not own e-books. They rent them, at a high price.

When you buy an e-book, you pay once and keep it. Libraries cannot do that. Publishers rent e-books to libraries under special licenses. Many run out after two years or a set number of loans. Then the library has to pay again. Some books are not offered to libraries at all.

The prices are much higher, too. In 2025, the state Board of Library Commissioners gave an example. A new Stephen King book cost you $14.99 on Kindle. The library's e-book license cost $59.99. The audiobook was $26.24 on Audible and $129.99 for a library. The board says publishers "often charge libraries five to six times the consumer cost."

And a library e-book works like a paper book: one reader at a time. That is why you wait. For popular titles, Massachusetts readers wait "over two months" on average, according to a release from state Sen. Cindy Friedman's office. That came as the state Senate passed a bill, 37 to 0 in November 2025, to study library e-book costs. It has not moved in the House since.

Could libraries just scan the books they already own and lend the scans? The Internet Archive, a nonprofit online library, tried that with books that publishers also sell as e-books. In 2024, a federal appeals court ruled that it broke copyright law. So for books like these, libraries lend e-books on the publishers' terms.

To be fair, studies differ on how much more e-books cost per loan. One 2025 study of thousands of libraries found the typical cost was 69 cents per loan for print and 93 cents for e-books. For libraries the size of Cape Ann's, the gap was only about 12 cents. So going digital is not much cheaper, and the library would own nothing at the end. Massachusetts library networks already spent $10.4 million on e-books and audiobooks in 2024, up from $4.3 million in 2019.

2. Not everyone can get online.

The internet costs money. You need a device and a monthly plan.

• In Gloucester, about 9.2% of homes have no internet subscription at all. That is roughly 1,200 homes. About 5.8% have no computer, the Census Bureau estimates.
• Nationally, only 54% of adults in homes earning under $30,000 have home broadband, Pew Research Center found in 2025. In homes earning $100,000 or more, it is 94%.
• Older people are less likely to have home internet. Only 70% of adults 65 and older have it, Pew found. On Cape Ann, 27.9% of Gloucester residents are 65 or older, and 38.2% in Rockport. Statewide it is 17.9%.

A library that lives only online would serve the people who need it least and shut out the people who need it most.

3. Paper still matters, especially for learning.

Researchers have tested reading on paper and on screens many times. A 2018 review of 54 studies with more than 171,000 readers found that people understood informational text better on paper. The gap was not huge, but it was steady, and it grew over the years of studies. It did not show up for stories.

Small children are different, too. In a 2019 study published in the journal Pediatrics, researchers at the University of Michigan watched parents read to toddlers. With print books, parents and children talked more about the story than with e-books. That back-and-forth talk is how young children build language.

A library is the one place where any family can get a stack of picture books for free.

4. Your reading stays private.

Massachusetts law says library records that show who read what are not public records. Apps are different. The privacy policy for Libby, the app most libraries use for e-books, says the company collects your lending history, reading progress, highlights and notes. The company is owned by KKR, a private investment firm. A library card and a library building keep more of what you read between you and the librarian.

5. A website cannot be a room.

This may be the biggest reason. A library is one of the last places where anyone can walk in, stay as long as they like and not buy anything.

Sociologist Eric Klinenberg studied the 1995 Chicago heat wave, which killed 739 more people than normal in one week. Many "died alone, behind locked doors and sealed windows," he wrote. He found that in poor neighborhoods with busy sidewalks, stores and other places where people met, people were much more likely to survive. "Libraries are really the paradigmatic social infrastructure," he later told American Libraries magazine. In plain words: libraries are the best example of the shared places that hold a community together.

Since 2011, FEMA, the national disaster agency, has let libraries get help moving to temporary space after a disaster. The American Library Association called it the first time FEMA treated libraries as "essential community organizations." In a 2025 national survey, 45% of public libraries said they serve as warming or cooling centers in very hot or cold weather.

Think of who uses a library on a weekday afternoon. Kids after school. A job seeker printing a résumé. An older person learning to video chat with grandchildren. A family new to the country practicing English. None of them can do all that on a website.

Libraries are changing, fast

The library of 2026 is not the library many of us grew up with. Here is how it is changing.

• From collecting books to connecting people. In a 2025 survey, 98.5% of U.S. public libraries said they work with community partners. Nearly 8 in 10 help connect people to social services.
• Social workers in the library. Cambridge hired the first full-time library social worker in Massachusetts in 2021. Boston, Worcester and Somerville followed.
• Making things, not just reading. About 1 in 3 libraries have maker equipment, and 1 in 4 have tools for making video and audio, a 2023 survey found.
• Tech help. About 95% of libraries teach digital skills. Nearly 3 in 10 have "digital navigators," staff who help people get online.
• Borrow more than books. Libraries lend hotspots, laptops, museum passes, tools and seeds. All four Cape Ann libraries lend museum passes.
• No more late fines. 85% of Massachusetts public libraries have dropped overdue fines, the state says, so cost does not keep kids away.

People are coming back, too. Library visits dropped hard during the pandemic. Nationally, the typical library's visits per person went from 0.4 in 2021 to 2.8 in 2023. In Massachusetts, people borrowed more than 65 million items last year, an all-time high, the state library board told the governor in 2025.

Libraries still have work to do. Nationally, visits per person fell 24% from 2009 to 2018, before the pandemic, and book borrowing fell too. That is a real trend. But the answer has been to change what libraries do, not to close them.

Gloucester just showed what a modern library looks like

On Sept. 5, 2025, Gloucester reopened the Sawyer Free Library after nearly three years away from its building. The $27.5 million project renovated the 1913 and 1976 buildings and added a new 14,000-square-foot wing. It was built for how people use libraries now:

• A whole second floor for children and teens, with an early learning center and the library's first teen room
• A Digital Learning Lab with two podcast studios, photo editing computers and a station that turns old VHS tapes and cassettes into digital files
• A local history research center with an 85-inch interactive screen
• A community room for up to 100 people, study rooms and a conference room
• Lockers for picking up holds after hours
• An all-electric building with no fossil fuels for heat, which earned a LEED Gold green building rating

People came. More than 600 showed up to the open house. A year later, borrowing and foot traffic were up about 30%, the director told the library's trustees in August 2026. The library has just over 11,000 card holders, about 2,000 more than a year ago. Its meeting rooms were booked 492 times in the year ending June 2026. Use of its public computers rose about 45%.

The new library is also taking on new jobs. It now leads Gloucester's work to help people get online. It ran a 12-week computer basics class whose graduates went home with a free Chromebook and a year of internet. An AmeriCorps "digital navigator" was set to start there in September 2026.

Who paid for it? The state's library construction program awarded $9 million. Banks, businesses and residents are covering most of the rest through a fundraising campaign. The city borrowed the money up front so the work could start, and the library is paying it back. In 2022, the city's finance chief told councilors the plan was that the city "will not have to invest any money in the construction," according to the meeting minutes. The library still owed about $11.8 million in August 2026.

Read our full profile of the new Sawyer Free Library.

See it for yourself today. The library is holding a Tech Expo today from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with devices to try, workshops and activities for kids. Here is what is on.

What libraries do for a town: the evidence

Saying libraries matter is easy. Here is what careful research shows.

• Better buildings bring more readers. Economists studied library spending across the country over more than 25 years. When towns invested in library buildings, visits and children's borrowing rose 5% to 15% for years afterward. Children's reading test scores in the area went up a little. The effect on scores was small, but it was real. (Gilpin, Karger and Nencka, American Economic Journal, 2024)
• People use libraries more than almost anything else. In 2019, Americans went to the library more often than to the movies, sports events, concerts or museums, a Gallup poll found. Adults in lower-income homes went more often than those in higher-income homes.
• People notice when libraries close. Two in three Americans said closing their local library would have a major impact on their community, Pew found in 2016.
• Reading starts early. Children in homes where no adult finished high school are far more likely to be poor: 49%, compared with 4% when an adult has a four-year college degree, federal data show. Those families also visited libraries less often, a 2016 federal survey found. Free story times and summer reading are meant to close that gap.
• The dollars add up. Studies in other states estimate about $4 to $5 in value for each $1 spent on libraries. Those studies use different methods, so treat them as rough estimates.

The state library board put it this way in a 2025 letter to the governor: "Every day, libraries are stepping in to support people in ways that other organizations are not, or cannot."

Cape Ann's libraries, side by side

Here is what the state's newest records show for the year ending June 30, 2025. The libraries are very different sizes, so the fairest way to compare is per person.

Together, the four libraries lent about 402,000 items, about 1,100 a day. That is 13% more than before the pandemic, in the year ending June 2019. More than 1 in 4 loans were digital. In Gloucester it was more than 1 in 3.

What it costs, and the case against

In the year ending June 2025, the four towns put a combined $2,859,099 into their libraries, which lent 401,857 books, e-books, movies and other items. That is about $62 per person for the year, or about $7 of town money for each item lent. The state added $94,778 in library aid for fiscal 2026.

That is real money, and there are fair arguments against spending it:

• "Fewer people come than used to." True over the long run, as noted above, and true here too. Rockport and Manchester reported fewer visits last year than in 2019, and Manchester's director has told her trustees in-person visits are falling. But borrowing is up in both towns, programs are busy, and in Gloucester foot traffic jumped once the new building opened.
• "Everything is online for free." Much of what is free online is ads or unreliable. And the books people most want are not free online. They are rented to libraries at a high price.
• "A company could do this cheaper." In 2018, an economist writing for Forbes argued that Amazon should replace local libraries to save tax money. Forbes removed the article after a backlash, saying it was outside the writer's "specific area of expertise." Here is the problem with the idea: a store sells to people who can pay, and it keeps a record of what you read. A library serves everyone, for free, and keeps your reading private.

In Gloucester, the library gets less than 1 cent of every dollar in the city's general fund. For that, the city gets a library open to anyone, free.

How the government sees libraries

Massachusetts was an early leader. The Boston Public Library was set up in 1848. It calls itself the first large free city library in the United States. The words "Free to All" are carved over its door.

The state sets rules for free libraries. Massachusetts law lets each city and town set up a public library "for its inhabitants." To get state aid, a library cannot charge residents to borrow regular books, and it must serve any Massachusetts resident. A town must also budget at least the average of its last three years, plus 2.5%, and keep the library open a set number of hours. All four Cape Ann towns were approved for state aid every year from 2019 through 2026.

The state is spending more. This year's state budget has $53.4 million for libraries. State aid to local libraries, $20.4 million, is the most ever, the state library board says. "Libraries remove barriers and disparities and promote equity and inclusion," the board's director, Maureen Amyot, said in July 2026.

Washington's role is in question. The federal government sends money to state library agencies through the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Massachusetts uses its share, about $3.6 million a year, for research tools, English and citizenship classes and grants to local libraries.

• March 14, 2025: President Trump signed an order to shrink the agency down to what the law requires. Grants were canceled. Starting July 1, 2025, Massachusetts cut the money for its statewide research tools from $2.8 million to $1.17 million and dropped about 21 of them.
• April 4, 2025: Massachusetts joined other states in suing. Twenty-one states were part of the case.
• Nov. 21, 2025: A federal judge ruled the cuts illegal and blocked them. The canceled grants were restored in December. A second lawsuit by library groups was settled in April 2026.
• Now: Congress funded the agency for the budget year that ended Sept. 30. For the year that began Oct. 1, the White House again proposed closing it. A House committee voted to keep funding it. The Senate had not acted as of early September. A short-term spending law keeps the money flowing through Dec. 11.

Separately, the Federal Communications Commission voted in September 2025 to stop paying for Wi-Fi hotspots that libraries lend out. Libraries can still lend them, but must find other money to pay for them.

What presidents and others have said

Leaders from both parties have spoken up for libraries for more than 200 years.

I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expence than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county ...Thomas Jefferson, in a letter, May 19, 1809 (his spelling)

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll git me a book I ain't read.Young Abraham Lincoln, as Carl Sandburg told it in his 1926 biography. A similar line appears in an 1889 interview with Lincoln's cousin Dennis Hanks, published in 1908. So these may not be Lincoln's exact words.

A side note for Cape Ann readers: Sandburg wrote that Lincoln said this to a lawyer in Rockport. That was Rockport, Indiana, not our Rockport.

It seems to me that the dedication of a library is in itself an act of faith.President Franklin D. Roosevelt, opening his presidential library, June 30, 1941

The libraries of America are and must ever remain the homes of free, inquiring minds.President Dwight D. Eisenhower, letter to the American Library Association, June 24, 1953

If this nation is to be wise as well as strong ... then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries.Sen. John F. Kennedy, National Library Week, April 13, 1959

Libraries are for everyone and therein lies their real value.President Lyndon B. Johnson, signing a library construction law, Feb. 11, 1964

Information is the essence of education and the lifeblood of democracy.President Jimmy Carter, message to Congress on libraries, Sept. 26, 1980

More than a building that houses books and data, the library represents a window to a larger world ...Sen. Barack Obama, American Library Association conference, June 2005, as published by American Libraries magazine

Others agree. Benjamin Franklin wrote that America's early subscription libraries made "common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries." Andrew Carnegie, whose $10,000 gift built Rockport's first library building in 1907, wrote that no use of money did more good for young people than "the founding of a public library." Author Ray Bradbury, who never went to college, told the New York Times in 2009, "Libraries raised me."

Closer to home, state Sen. Bruce Tarr spoke at the Sawyer Free Library groundbreaking in 2023. "Libraries allow us to find the best that lies within us," he said.

What readers and librarians told us

We asked the director and trustees of each Cape Ann library to answer the reader's question in their own words.

Rockport library trustee Joe Dapper called Cape Ann's libraries "truly instruments of learning and true community centers." Rockport Director Cindy Grove answered our questions about her library's budget. Her answers are in Rockport's profile, coming Oct. 24. The other directors had not answered by our deadline. Each library's profile will carry its director's words if they send them.

Readers have weighed in, too. Asked which town service she would protect no matter what, Dorothy Sieradzki of Manchester-by-the-Sea picked the library:

Libraries are essential especially when money is tight. Books, music, movies, newspapers and magazines, all available for free when people need to cut back.Dorothy Sieradzki, Manchester-by-the-Sea, in Crosscurrents, Oct. 8

Our answer

So, with the internet, why do we still need libraries? Because the internet gives you information, and a library gives you a way in. It buys the books you cannot get free online. It helps the people who are not online at all. It gives children their first books and older people a hand with new technology. It keeps what you read private. And it gives a town a warm, free room where anyone is welcome.

Libraries have to keep changing to earn their place in the budget. Gloucester's new library shows they can. We think that is worth about $62 a person a year.

How to take part

• Get a card. Library cards are free for anyone who lives in Massachusetts. One card also works for e-books in the Libby app.
• Go to a trustees meeting. Each library has a board of trustees. In Rockport, Essex and Manchester, the trustees are town officials and meet in public. Gloucester's library is run by its own nonprofit board.
• Speak at budget time. In Gloucester, the mayor proposes the budget in the spring and the City Council votes in June. In Rockport, Essex and Manchester, voters decide at town meeting. Watch our Budget Watch series for dates.
• Tell us what your library means to you. Email [email protected]. We may share some answers in a follow-up story.

What's on at Cape Ann's libraries

Story times, classes, talks, clubs and more, from each library's own calendar. Pick a library to see what is coming up.

Coming up: a Cape Ann library every Saturday

A reader's question started this series, and we are not done answering it. Each Saturday through Nov. 7, we take you inside one of Cape Ann's public libraries: what it offers, how it is changing, what it costs, who runs it and how you can get involved. Every profile has the library's latest state numbers, its hours and a live list of its upcoming events. Each library also gets a one minute video on our Facebook and Instagram pages the day its profile runs, and you can hear about it on the Morning Current.

• Saturday, Oct. 17: Sawyer Free Library, Gloucester. What the city got for $27.5 million, a first year with about 30% more visits and borrowing, the new jobs the library has taken on, and who paid for it.
• Saturday, Oct. 24: Rockport Public Library. The most borrowing per resident on Cape Ann, longer hours, a food pantry run with The Open Door, a Library of Things and a study of its 1864 granite home.
• Saturday, Oct. 31: T.O.H.P. Burnham Library, Essex. A small library inside Town Hall with about two and a half full-time staff, a new director and five-year plan, longer Saturdays, and a new ramp and garden.
• Saturday, Nov. 7: Manchester-by-the-Sea Public Library. An 1887 stone library that lends more per resident than most in the state but has run out of room, the restroom voters just fixed, and the plan for more space.

Earlier coverage: Gloucester's $179 million budget, line by line (Oct. 5), which shows the library's share of the city budget, and a reader's Crosscurrents comment (Oct. 8) on why libraries matter when money is tight.