Hold the Fort; We're Coming Back!
Hopeful signals in a "damnable parade of disasters"
John N. Berry III, Editor-in-Chief -- Library Journal, 2/15/2003
Norman Oder's generally negative assessment of library budgets, "A Precarious Holding Pattern " (LJ 1/03, p. 55–57), is a good place to begin. Only the very largest libraries face deep budget cuts. Across the board, budgets are up 2.3 percent. Salary budgets are actually up 2.9 percent, stealing some of their muscle from a 2.1 percent reduction in materials budgets.
In this mixed bag there are rare individual signals of great strength. In Ocean County, NJ, that wonderful library with the fundraising calendar that features motorcycling librarians, per capita support will hit $50, with a $13 million bond issue for capital improvements. Libraries of all types have organized to buttress their support and find new ways to attract money, with some success.
Even in the embattled libraries of California, several public libraries in the state are bucking the trends. In San Diego, the budget has increased by about 90 percent over five years, and the city won't trim the budget this year. The library's $312 million expansion plan is continuing. The beginning salary for a Librarian I under the new union contract at the Los Angeles Public Library has increased to $45,518, with an automatic spike to $48,065 after the six-month probationary period.
That contract validates the American Library Association's (ALA) campaign to increase librarians' salaries, which has enlisted substantial backing throughout the profession and already reports some progress. Under President Mitch Freedman, ALA is also organizing a "Save America's Libraries" campaign to seek public championship. Its first rally was held at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia last month.
A proven way to "save America's libraries" is an independent library district, because the tax base protects the budget. One example is in Saratoga Springs, NY, a true library town, where per capita funding will top $84 this year. In Colorado, where 40 of the state's public libraries are in library taxing districts, the Denver Public Library system is considering asking voters to create such a district. Denver was hit with a $5 million cutback that cost 30 jobs.
As in all previous recessions, library use is on the increase, and, more importantly, research from the Gates Foundation shows that a growing number of patrons now depend on libraries for access to computers and digital information sources. To ensure there are librarians to serve these new patrons, library school enrollment is up in nearly all programs.
Even recent setbacks on policy issues like copyright extension have produced a kind of silver lining. There is now more public and press attention to and consciousness of protecting citizens' basic rights of access to information and to its reuse for educational purposes under "fair use" provisions of various new copyright laws. An effort to expand and secure the public domain in information is clearly taking shape.
While there are no big victories yet in dismal 2003, there are signals of change in the library field, even as there are portents of recovery in the economy and changing opinion in the political arena. Just as public sentiment about war is more evenly divided as that war draws near, and presidential intervention in the suit against the University of Michigan challenging affirmative action has rekindled debate on that issue, library budget decreases have brought new library advocacy and innovative efforts to build more of it.
While we struggle with tough times, we can take heart in those flashes of future fortitude. So hang in there, dear colleagues, or, as the old union song says, "Hold the fort, for we are coming!"
