Nearly a year after a consultant suggested consolidation was the best way to fix their fiscal woes, the three public libraries operating in the Woodland Hills School District remain struggling independents.

Findings of a study this year said the CC Mellor Memorial Library in Edgewood, the Carnegie Free Library of Swissvale and the Carnegie Library of Braddock were in trouble. The latter two were operating with fiscal losses and could close unless they pooled their resources and agreed to consolidate operations, the study said.

In the study, consultants Dewey & Kaye Inc., of the South Side, gave the libraries these options:

Continue collaborating in fund-raising and programming and see money troubles grow.

Partner in services and administrative functions and find logistics difficult.

Merge under an umbrella organization, the recommended option.

Library administrators have yet to announce how they plan to handle the situation, though Sally Bogie, the director of CC Mellor, said the three were working together on an outreach program for preschoolers.

Ms. Bogie would not comment on how the libraries can reconfigure themselves.

Victoria Vargo, Braddock Library director, said the libraries needed more time.

"I'm fairly sure that the three of us agree that a full-blown merger is far down the line," she said. "We've agreed that the collaboration of services, something we've been doing all along, is probably the easiest to accomplish right now. [It's] certainly a good first step."

Still, the study has fostered closer connections among the three libraries, Ms. Vargo said. Even if consolidation is the answer, it will come slowly.

"I think merger is sort of a frightening term to some people," Ms. Vargo said. "It sort of makes people think you're giving up your identity."

Bruce Egli, director of the Swissvale library, said he felt that consolidation would be the way to go.

"It appears, from a professional viewpoint, it would be certainly more efficient to have one library serving people who live in the Woodland Hills district," he said.

Mr. Egli said that, if one executive director were to oversee general operations, the directors responsible for individual locations could spend most of their time getting out into the community to learn the needs of their users.

"Then only one person would have to sit in the office all day and go to meetings," he said, adding that each director now has to attend a raft of meetings. "You can't not go to the meetings. If you don't, you can't find out how to get money."

Also, having one person oversee the library or agency would help administrators meet funding requirements.

Swissvale cannot meet the matching expectations of the Regional Asset District, a major source of public dollars for the libraries. The Swissvale library receives up to $4.50 per capita from the school board, but, in order to get RAD money, the library has to receive at least $5 per capita in local dollars.

If the libraries consolidate, "it would be easier to meet state requirements," Mr. Egli said.

Still, "nothing's been said," said Marilyn Messina, a member of the CC Mellor board of trustees and of the Woodland Hills school board. She said the library issue did not even come up at a recent CC Mellor trustees meeting.

Marilyn Jenkins, executive director of the Allegheny County Library Association, the organization that supports local libraries and commissioned the study, said little more.

"The three libraries in the Woodland Hills School District are actively engaged in collaborative planning to benefit residents through improved and expanded service," she wrote in an electronic message.

The original Dewey & Kaye study, commissioned by the Allegheny County Library Association, concluded that one of the obstacles to solving the fiscal problems had been resistance to a merger.