Editorial- More Successful Than Begging
It is high time to make the library district our top lobbying priority
John N. Berry III, Editor-in-Chief -- Library Journal, 6/15/2002
We're in that downward arc again in the recurring cycle of public library support. Our appeals for increased state and federal aid are not producing new revenue. Fundraising to tap private philanthropy, while it works for some, is not widely successful for public libraries. Their dependence on the local property tax has put those libraries into a funding basket with a host of other municipal services, and to hear the constant complaints of the minority who own property in most communities, that basket is much too heavy. Efforts to move support for libraries to other kinds of taxes have had limited success. A statewide tax scheme, for example, turned the state of Ohio into public library heaven for many years, but even that setup is facing cuts and feeling political pressures now.
When the funding cycle turned downward a decade ago, one of the alternatives libraries tried was the independent library district. Lee Brawner, who directed the "district-type" library serving Oklahoma City and County, urged library organizations to lobby for state legislation to allow libraries to form districts ("The People's Choice: Public Library Districts," LJ 1/93, p. 59–62).
Library districts were allowed in 16 states in 1993, and a few more have been added since. Many state library agencies have pressed hard to bring libraries into districts. In Kentucky, a whopping 88 percent of the libraries are in independent library districts. In Delaware, library districts govern more than half the libraries. In Colorado, districts cover nearly 40 percent of the libraries. In Idaho and Illinois, it is about 48 percent. Library districts are big in Michigan (33 percent), Arizona (25 percent), Nevada (nearly 40 percent), and Washington (31 percent).
The independent library district, which has the authority and power to go directly to the voters for library support, has an incredibly successful track record. It brings a library system independence and stronger and more stable funding. It has brought greater success in terms of library support than decades of our continuing lobbying for subsidies and "aid" from state and federal governments, or our hat-in-hand begging to private philanthropy.
Saul Amdursky's report on the creation of the district for the Kalamazoo Public Library (KPL), the Gale/LJ Library of the Year 2002 (see p. 32–35) was part of Brawner's article. The conversion of KPL from school district library to a library district in 1990 is the key to KPL's funding stability and success.
The library district was also crucial to the success of the Ann Arbor District Library, MI, winner of the Gale/LJ Library of the Year 1997. The library district is what welded several tiny community libraries into a strong system in Delta County, CO (see "Dawn in Delta County ," LJ 3/1/02, p. 52–55). The hundreds of library districts in America are evidence of the tremendous strength of that form of governance.
Despite the repeated success of the library district, and despite Brawner's urgings in 1993 and after, the idea has not become a national lobbying priority. Library district legislation is not high on the current agenda of the American Library Association or its units, the Public Library Association and the Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies (the organization of state library agency workers), or many state library associations.
It is high time we mobilized librarianship's lobbying efforts behind state legislation to allow independent library districts in the two-thirds of states where this is not yet possible. Nearly every time libraries can get on the ballot and go directly to the voters, they win support. It is a proven strategy, particularly in a downward economy, that must be made available to all libraries.
