Methodology
The approach used in this simulation study examined two funding scenarios. Scenario 1 simply removes government spending for libraries and provides a basic value of that spending within the state of Florida. This scenario assumes that the tax monies spent on libraries are not collected and thus provides no tax cut or redirection of spending. Scenario 2 mimics the analysis done in the 2004 study by redistributing library revenues to other state and local government agencies, thus providing an economic comparison between governmental spending for libraries versus spending on other government functions.

Information for each of these scenarios was entered into the software at the county level, permitting results to be viewed not only statewide, but for each county as well. Dollar outputs are converted from the fixed year 2000 dollars used by REMI in its model output to 2008 dollars for reporting purposes.