That's the message from Ballarat City Council, after councillors backed the move in a behind-closed-doors vote at a meeting on Wednesday night.

The council has given itself six months to map out the city's library needs for the next 10 years.

In the meantime, it needs to convince neighbouring councils with a stake in the corporation to explore alternative models for library services.

The council's people and communities portfolio councillor Mark Harris yesterday conceded that would be an uphill battle.

"As it stands at the moment, they're pretty nervous,'' Cr Harris said.

But the council thinks money can be saved if library administration services, such as human resources and finance, were absorbed by one council.

"If we did that ourselves, we'd have more money for all councils to put back into libraries.''

He said the council did not want to leave other councils "in the lurch,'' and the move would not threaten library services.

Ballarat mayor Judy Verlin said the decision to vote `in camera'' had not been taken lightly.

"That is only the third time in 18 months that this council had gone in camera,'' Cr Verlin said.

"It's because of the content we had to get around for us to be able to vote on the resolution."

The library corporation was formed in 1997 with Ararat, Ballarat, Central Goldfields, Hepburn, Moorabool and Pyrenees councils. Southern Grampians joined in 2006.

A confidential report, accidentally posted on the council's website Monday, said the service was under-funded, under-staffed and unsustainable.

It said the library lost more books than it replaced.