Remember - these decisions weren't being made by the library, or for a 500 person company, they were part of a $126 million dollar infrastructure upgrade for over 1000 sites for the state of west virginia. The point I was trying to make was that the decision that makes sense for that library (individually - say the local librarian was given $25,000 and given freedom to spend it however they chose - they would probably do exactly as you suggested - drop $60 on a linksys and the rest on computers/books), no longer makes sense when you are rolling out $126 million worth of equipment. The most realistic alternative decision would have been to downgrade the library from a $7800 Cisco 3945 to a $2800 Cisco 2921 (an ISR with less capacity, but reasonably similar features and management). The Library would then have been on a 75 mbit/sec platform for the next 10 years. They wouldn't have received any of the savings to spend on books/computers, etc... They would have just gotten less capable networking equipment.

I could probably defend either decision (Going heterogenous 2921 (small) + 3945 (big) vs homogenous 3945 across the state) - but I know the one that would let me sleep easy for the next 10 years.