10.14.09
Posted in economy at 11:50 am by Bev Goldberg
It’s autumn—that time of year when a library official’s fancy turns to thoughts of the next fiscal year. At least that’s what should happen, unless said library official is beleaguered by the specter of revenue-projection shortfalls that could erode carefully laid plans for the current fiscal year.
Truth be told, library officials who aren’t feeling beleaguered this fall are the exception rather than the rule. In at least three states—Connecticut, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—one can’t help but wonder whether the legislative horse trading done to balance the budget will end before FY2010 does.
After enduring a budget battle that ended 101 days beyond the July 1 start of FY2010 in a loss of almost $25 million, weary Pennsylvania library advocates began making lemonade from the $68.3 million in state support that was left for libraries for FY2010—a 26.7% cut from the $94.6 million appropriated in FY2009. The fiscal bloodletting could have been much worse; in July, the state Senate had passed a bill slashing library aid by 55%. Glenn Miller, executive director of the Pennsylvania Library Association, astutely observed, “There are a number of moving pieces—companion bills—that also make up the overall state budget. This includes a bill (or bills) to raise revenues and bills that spell out in more detail how money in the budget is to be spent. I note this only to point out that some other key votes also take place that affect the makeup of an overall state budget.”
In Connecticut, it seemed at summer’s end that lawmakers were more readily heeding the call of their constituents and maintaining library support at last year’s funding levels. But Gov. Jodi Rell turned the tables at the end of the summer by announcing that state agencies would have to absorb a total of $473 million in “outside vendor” holdbacks—a fiscal legerdemain in which the state doesn’t distribute expected payments even though it hasn’t actually reduced appropriations. In the case of the Connecticut Library Consortium, the sudden $950,000 blow to statewide resource sharing meant the abrupt discontinuation September 30 of InfoAnytime, a popular 24/7 online reference service that brings Tutor.com access to 162 public and academic libraries, as well as the iCONN digital library. Connecticut Library Association President Randi Ashton-Pritting responded with a September 29 letter to Gov. Rell that asks for library-vendor contracts to be exempted from the directive. On another front, former CLA president Carl A. Antonucci, Jr. told American Libraries, “We are still fighting to have the [state] Office of Policy Management restore what has been cut.”
The fight for libraries’ survival continues in Michigan as well, where funding for the statewide library book and electronic material-sharing programs has gotten caught in a budget standoff between Gov. Jennifer Granholm and the legislature. Despite her September 9 Executive Order amendment to prioritize funding for the Michigan eLibrary (MeL) and Michigan eLibrary Catalog (MeLCat), Gov. Granholm signed into law October 12 a 40% cut to to libraries’ $10-million resource-sharing budget, although she urged lawmakers to “find the funding for libraries.” The $4-million loss at the state level is expected to trigger the withholding of another $4 million in federal aid to libraries.
Let the strategizing begin
Before the budget ink was dry, determined library communities were strategizing about how to regain their collective buying power.
Shortly after legislators passed the 40% cut out of committee, Michigan Library Association Executive Gretchen Courand told the September 29 Lansing State Journal that the association was considering a lawsuit to force the state to abide by a statute mandating that the Library of Michigan receive $1.50 per person annually for library resource sharing; according to Courand, the $6 million for FY2010 amounts to approximately 60 cents per person.
Connecticut librarians issued a call in the Connecticut Library Consortium’s October newsletter to colleagues interested in “a cost-sharing proposition” to save InfoAnytime.
As for the Keystone State, PaLA’s Glenn Miller told American Libraries he was analyzing “how far you can stretch $3 million to cover $11.1 million of resource-sharing services.”
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07.12.09
Posted in 2009 ALA Annual Conference at 8:55 am by Sean Fitzpatrick
Three weeks into a pilot campaign aimed at moving OCLC’s 2008 study From Awareness to Funding from theory to practice, OCLC hosted a session July 11 to talk about where the study has taken them since its publication one year ago and to discuss their new campaign: Geek the Library.
The purpose of Geek the Library is to show what Awareness calls “Probable Supporters,” or regular voters who are likely to vote in favor of library funding, how the library can engage them in their interests and create a transformational experience. The call to action? Get you geek on. Geek the library. Show your support.
Worm Geek
“Geeking” something is simply showing nerd-level passion. It’s cool to geek. The idea of the campaign is that whatever people geek, the library can engage them in that passion.
OCLC’s 2008 study showed that voters who perceive the library as a “transformational” force and not just an “informational” source are most likely to vote in support.
Of course, amid a global economic crisis where city budgets are being cut nationwide, voter support is more important now than ever. “As we all know, the world changed after we did this [2008] research,” said OCLC Vice President for the Americas and Global Vice President of Marketing Cathy De Rosa. What researchers at Leo Burnett found in a follow-up to the Awareness study was that people feel the future is uncertain and that the important behavioral shift has shown that people have moved from a “trade-up” to a “trade-off” mindset. This finding, while bad news for most of Leo Burnett’s high-profile clients, is good news for libraries. Leo Burnett’s follow-up study also showed a renewed focus among Americans on self-reliance, “almost to an early-American level” said De Rosa.
De Rosa suggested the findings of this year’s followup study only enhance those of last year’s. As people “trade off” luxuries for necessities, libraries see an increase in usage.
But moving the study from theory to practice took some action. “You can’t just take the words ‘information to transformation’ and apply them to libraries without some sort of campaign,” said OCLC Director of Branding and Marketing Services Jenny Johnson. The campaign aims to activate probable supporters’ “latent love” for libraries.
Geek the Library, a field campaign in southern Georgia and central Iowa covering 80 libraries and 1.1 million people, has four goals: to increase awareness for library funding, to change perceptions and attitudes of probable supporters and elected officials, to measure the potential to help lead to a reverse in the downward trend in library funding in the U.S., and to provide materials and learning to the public library community at no charge.
OCLC plans to report on the findings of this field study in March 2010.
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03.25.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:01 pm by Leonard Kniffel
Unit Managers heard it this morning for the first time as a group, when ALA Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels announced that the Association would attempt to close a projected $1.6 million shortfall in the $27 million FY2009 general-fund budget by, among other things, eliminating 10 staff positions and imposing a three-day payless furlough and other vacation rules on remaining staff to save a targeted $500,000 by the end of the fiscal year, August 31. Fiels hopes the Association can fill the remaining gap by tapping into ALA reserves.
Upper management and the Executive Board began intense and frequent discussions about revenue almost immediately after the national economic crisis hit, knowing that it would inevitably trickle down to libraries and to ALA. Fiels pointed out that the drop was precipitous; the financial picture this month looks totally different from the way it looked last September. He said it was essential that management move quickly if the ‘09 budget is to be balanced. A 3% across-the-board expense cut had already been implemented earlier this year.
An hour and a half after the managers meeting, Fiels explained the situation at an all-staff meeting, noting that in addition to the three unpaid days, Memorial Day and the Fourth of July would be unpaid holidays in 2009. In addition, any vacation days not used by the end of August will automatically convert to sick days; the practice of carrying vacation days over into the next fiscal year will be temporarily suspended. The vacation days and unpaid furlough days will be scheduled in consultation with the supervisors of individual units in order to spread them out over the remainder of the fiscal year. In addition to the 10 positions to be eliminated, an additional six will be unfunded in 2010.
The need for these drastic measures was not questioned at the unit managers meeting or the staff meeting. Foremost on everyone’s mind, of course, was the question of what positions will be cut, and that information has not been made public, both out of respect for the employees’ privacy and the desire of ALA as an employer to handle each affected individual in a caring and humane fashion. The staff cuts are expected to be made within the next two weeks.
We all knew it was coming, especially those of us in Publishing who have been watching the economic debacle unfold at newspapers and publishing houses across the country. ALA Publishing has been hardest hit of all ALA revenue-generating units, with advertising down 30%. Although ACRL had a successful division conference this month and registration is strong for the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago this summer, they cannot make up for the decline. Membership loyalty is also a big factor, but the fastest growing membership category (student), although a great sign for the future, also does not generate enough revenue to address the current situation. Print publication of the ALA Handbook of Organization will also be suspended.
The text of the Fiels’ all-staff memo:
Over the last month, we have been updating our budget projections for the fiscal year that ends on August 31, 2009.
The good news is that registration for Annual conference is strong, and even ahead of registration for last year at this point, and we expect a very exciting and successful conference in Chicago in July. Membership also remains strong and steadily growing, and every dollar in member dues is matched by revenue from publishing, conferences, grants, overhead recovery and income from the endowment.
Everyone is aware, however, of the current economic situation and its impact on libraries, businesses, and other non-profit organizations. Given the state of the economy and library budgets nationwide, it will not come as a surprise to everyone that we are now projecting a net revenue shortfall in the ALA general fund of over $1.6 million.
Because the financial picture has changed so quickly since the beginning of the fiscal year, and because we must reduce expenditures in anticipation of this shortfall, we are going to have to take some unusual measures to reduce salary-related expenditures for the remainder of the year. Specifically:
1. Any vacation days not taken as of the end of August will automatically convert to sick days. No vacation days will be carried over in to 2010.
2. Memorial Day and the Fourth of July will be unpaid holidays in 2009.
3. Each employee will be required to take three additional unpaid furlough days between now and August 31st. These days need to be scheduled in consultation with your Unit Manager so that we can 1) spread out the impact of the reduction on employee income and 2) reduce the impact on member services and unit operations.
Implementation of these three measures will result in general fund savings of approximately $500,000. Our current plan calls for the remainder of the shortfall to be made up through other cost cutting measures, adjustments and use of ALA general fund reserves.
Please note that these measures apply to all ALA staff and all ALA units, including grant funded employees and full-time contract staff.
In anticipation of our lowered revenue estimates, the Association will also be eliminating approximately ten positions between now and the beginning of FY 2010, and will also be leaving an additional half dozen positions unfunded in 2010. In each instance, we will be making every effort to minimize the impact of any cost-cutting measures on staff as well as services to members, libraries and the public. By preparing a 2010 budget that reflects a balance between expenditures and our adjusted revenue expectations, we should hopefully provide for a more stable environment in the coming year.
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02.10.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:39 am by Leonard Kniffel
You probably heard it for yourself, but last night President Barack Obama did it again. He said “libraries.” At his first prime-time press conference since taking office, he addressed a nervous nation about unemployment, emphasizing that “the single most important part of this Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Plan is the fact that it will save or create up to 4 million jobs, because that’s what America needs most right now.”
More than 90% of the jobs created in the plan will be in the private sector, he said, and “they’re not going to be make-work jobs but jobs doing the work that America desperately needs done, jobs rebuilding our crumbling bridges, repairing our dangerously deficient dams and levees, so that we don’t face another Katrina.” And then he added, “They’ll be jobs creating the 21st-century classrooms, libraries, and labs for millions of children across America.”
“He hears us,” I thought to myself, and he hears ALA. His people are listening. Asked later in the press conference about bipartisanship, Obama took it back to education: “The suggestion is, why should the federal government be involved in school construction? Well. I visited a school down in South Carolina that was built in the 1850s. Kids are still learning in that school—as best they can…. It’s right next to a railroad, and when the train runs by the whole building shakes and the teacher has to top teaching for a while. The auditorium is completely broken down and they can’t use it. So why wouldn’t we want to build state-of-the-art schools with science labs that are teaching our kids the skills they need for the 21st century, that will enhance our economy and, by the way, right now will create jobs?”
Indeed, why wouldn’t we? Every once in a while, it’s good for all of us inside ALA to remind ourselves that we are a 501(c)3 organization—noprofit educational—and that we are in the knowledge business more than the information business. It’s going to take more than the dissemination of information to play a key role in the nation’s economic recovery. The new ALA Office for Library Advocacy and the Washington Office are redoubling their efforts to reach the new administration with our education message. It seems they are listening.
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01.25.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:50 pm by Greg Landgraf
LITA’s traditional Top Tech Trends discussion played to a standing-room-only crowd this morning, although the event was briefly delayed by a fire alarm in the hotel.
Participants and attendees ignored the alarm, which proved to be nothing, and focused on four topics: the management of open-source software, the growth of geolocational technologies, linked data, and the effect of the economy on technology choices in libraries.
Open Source
Karen Coombs, head of web services at the University of Houston, observed the number of companies being formed to manage open-source software. “That’s a really big change. In the past, open-source has always required your own developers and staff to support.”
Karen Schneider, community librarian at Equinox, said that when libraries were developing their own integrated library systems in the 1970s and 80s, they tended to follow the same model: Development would stay within the library, and the ILS would continually get harder to maintain, until it got complicated enough that the library had no choice but to buy a vendor product. “Now, the test for the open source community is, ‘Can you move past your founding library or founding community?’”
Clifford Lynch, director of the Coalition for Networked Information, discussed the successes of the Flickr Commons, particularly the unanticipated benefit that when libraries posted photos online, users returned narratives about those images that go beyond “the trivialities of tagging.” Participants are now looking at ways to take that data and put it into their own databases, although Lynch warned that no model has been developed yet that would scale to large numbers of issues.
Geolocation
Panelists saw two distinct applications for the ubiquity of geographic information. Library consultant Karen Coyle sees the ability to deliver information based on where someone is on the earth; for example, seeing a building and having information about it delivered to them. Coyle also called for an Open Street Map for libraries, although one audience member announced that she had just finished geocoding every library in Texas and suggested that other state library associations might have similar projects underway.
Lynch and Coombs focused instead on what Lynch termed “fine geolocation” to provide GPS-type data within an individual library. For example, a cellphone-based system that “can tell you you’re in the wrong shelf; you need to be two shelves over,” Lynch explained. An audience member said the National Library of Singapore is already testing this kind of system.
Linked data
Roy Tennant of OCLC Research said that linked data may make him “eat half of my hat” regarding his skepticism toward the Semantic Web, although there are not yet specific examples. “First we have to make it possible to do things and then see what happens,” he said, noting that the Library of Congress is planning to put up a site using linked data in the next 4-6 weeks.
Economic considerations
“In rank-and-file libraries, I’m seeing a controlled burn,” Schneider said. “Libraries are looking much harder at their processes. Ideally, that would lead to getting rid of the silly stuff and focussing on the useful stuff.” The panel agreed that the poor economy may encourage more libraries to install self-check capabilities.
The panel also discussed the problem of getting broadband access to rural areas. “It’s not even a money problem, it’s an end-of-the-road problem,” Schneider said. Coombs illustrated the point with the plight of her parents, who have to connect to the internet with a 28.8 modem because the cable company doesn’t think it would be cost-effective to run cable to their house.
Lynch called for “a considerably more nuanced and fluid public policy here,” and urged rural libraries not to frame the lack of broadband as solely a library issue. “It’s a much broader economic and development problem and should be taken on as a municipal or regional issue.”
The LITA Blog liveblogged the session (see me sideways with computer at 8:22), and the session was streamed at www.ustream.tv/channel/griffey.
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01.16.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:22 am by Leonard Kniffel
We received the text of his letter to the New York Times today from Jeffrey Scherer, board chair for Libraries for the Future in New York and architect at Meyer Scherer & Rockcastle in Minneapolis. Widely known for library design and a longtime champion for libraries, Scherer asked that we disseminate the letter, which, he hopes, will appear in the Times, should they in their wisdom decide to publish it. The letter is short but supercharged and might motivate you to write one of your own:
America’s public libraries are at the center of one of the most radical changes of information dissemination, use, and importance in our history. In many communities, they are the only source for individuals to connect to the World Wide Web, get reading materials and information essential to their rapidly changing lives—including employment and education materials. In these troubled economic times, they are even more critical as our citizen’s purchasing power has evaporated.
The proposed language of the $825 Billion Recovery Plan before the House of Representatives today does not include money for our libraries. While it includes roads and bridges to drive across our communities, it must include our intellectual bridges, the public library. It is crucial that they have the financial resources to be upgraded, expanded and renovated to fit the new era in the 21st century. I urge everyone to encourage Congress to include this crucial American intellectual resource in this recovery package.
Public libraries are at the heart of America’s very poorest and middle class communities. Increasingly, they are essential resources to further one’s education. As importantly, they are the essential community connection. While the hardware and the buildings may already be present, their broader role in supporting people needs in gathering to discuss civic issues, brush up their resumes, or learn more about a business opportunity is ever more critical. Through inclusion in the $825 Billion Recovery Plan, libraries can improve the tools and facilities that these constituents deserve at their libraries. Finally, for any institution to be effective, it has to be open and staffed. That takes taxpayers’ dollars. NOW is the time to invest in our libraries.
Meanwhile, the ALA Washington Office disagrees with Sherer’s assertion that public libraries are not included in the recovery plan and has posted a District Dispatch response refuting the notion that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 does not contain funding for libraries, asserting that Scherer “has misunderstood and misrepresented the bill.”
The Washington Office wants librarians to know that “libraries are, in fact, included as a qualifying institution for the K-12 Repair and Modernization funding and the Higher Education Repair and Modernization funding. Additionally, libraries can benefit from several other programs that benefit from stimulus funding in the legislation, including the Rural Community Facilities Program.” Scherer is correct, the posting goes on to say, “that libraries should benefit from the funds included to modernize federal and other public infrastructure, and it is our job as librarians and library supporters to inform Congress and our governors of this fact.”
In a January 16 e-mail message, Scherer told the Washington Office that his reading still indicates “that essentially public libraries are getting shorted in this bill,” from which “the 15,000+ public libraries in our society basically get nothing.” He went on to say, “That does not in any way suggest that the higher education, rural (native American) and school libraries do not deserve all that they can get. I applaud you for pointing this out. However, when a huge percentage of libraries are excluded, the notion that some libraries are included is just not enough.”
“In my library community planning work in New Orleans, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Kentucky,” Scherer added, “the way the stimulus funding is allocated, it will have no direct impact on the thousands of people who have no access to information other than in the public library.” He went on to say that he recently toured Johnson County, Kansas, as part of the master plan work his company is doing for the Johnson County Library. “There was one very moving encounter as we visited all their libraries,” he reported. “In Edgerton—the locals converted an old bank and have named the library “The Bank of Knowledge”—I met a young girl of about 10 years of age. We chatted while she looked through the teen paperback spinners. In the course of the conversation, I learned that she reads about 15 books a week, is home schooled, and relies on on-line courses accessed through the library to supplement her home school-work. She has four brothers and sisters. She said, ‘The library is one of the most important places in the world for me and my family.’ This small community has no broadband access at all—except for the pricey option of satellite connections-something this family can not afford. This is why I love designing libraries. This outweighs all other reasons. This is why I am so passionate about this topic–it is these little girls that need adults in Washington to step up. The civil engineering lobby (roads and bridges) have so much clout…it is the little guy that is being squeezed.”
Debate over this issue will likely continue in Denver at ALA’s Midwinter Meeting this week, notably at the Membership Town Hall Meeting scheduled for Saturday evening. Stay tuned.
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