BackTalk: We Must Protect State Library Funding

Among the line items with zeros were Colorado's seven library service systems. Many programs statewide have been cut. How do you demand money when even school breakfasts for underfed kids are vulnerable?

I wrote my representatives, and they responded nicely, but they're out of ideas. In a business defined by compromise, the only tool left now is the axe. Or, more literally, the delete key. Subsequent bills returned $1 million of the original $2.4 million library systems budget, which promptly dropped to a still uncertain $600,000.

One might find sympathy, if not advice, in almost any state, from Washington to Florida, from Massachusetts to Texas.

As a taxpayer, I see good arguments for funding Colorado's seven regional library service systems and state libraries in general. They are crucial links in the administration of library resource sharing. Libraries, and their networks for sharing, are part of any state's vital infrastructure—like roads or Colorado's state fiberoptic network or rural electric cooperatives or an urban water supply.

As conduits for the flow of knowledge, libraries are high-value infrastructure. Yet they are remarkably inexpensive. The cost of two miles of new highway would fund Colorado's library service systems.

These systems sponsor Colorado's statewide courier for interlibrary loan, plus various consortia of library catalogs needed for finding out who has what, which constitutes the first step in sharing. The top-down guidance from state libraries optimizes the cooperation among all the diverse, locally funded libraries, adding value to the services offered by every library. This small state investment is like a drop of timely, well-placed oil in a machine.

Our society is better lubricated than most, evidenced by our nation's dynamic "income mobility." Only one-quarter of millionaires today inherited their wealth; the rest are self-made. Ninety-eight percent of the population in the lowest fifth of income in 1975 moved up at least one income bracket by 1991.

This doesn't happen in a closed society. And you can't have a free and open society in today's world without libraries. Their value should be more evident now than ever. For example, we want to build a democracy in Iraq, but we hardly know how to begin. The infrastructure needed for free inquiry and the open communication necessary for the kind of liberal democracy we know simply does not exist there. Whether or not the commonplace is true that library use goes up in times of recession, it seems clear that libraries do become more important as a safety net of access.

The loss of state funding in Colorado exacerbates the double-indemnity problem faced by every state library, since federal library money comes in proportion to continued state funding. Likewise does it go away, millions to date in Colorado.

Over $150 million was spent locally on Colorado public libraries in 2001. Adding a couple of percent at the state level to direct sharing among these libraries is quite prudent. Spreading out information costs is real efficiency, and when such sharing disappears, many facets of library services will be more expensive, and the taxpayer will get less: not because libraries are inefficient—they have long been one of the best investments of public money—but because an essential cog has been removed from the works.

In an age when Western societies are being increasingly seduced by privatization, public libraries need staunch support. Good government programs are cooperative investments we make together for the future. Publicly supported libraries are exactly this, providing the access and materials for free inquiry—cornerstones of our democracy and our economy.

Compare this with the dead-end investment in prisons. One priority for Colorado should be to ratchet back expenditures on corrections, currently more than eight percent of the operating budget. Compare that to the .03 percent budgeted for libraries. Now is the time to become cleverer about how we deal with nonviolent offenders. Over 3000 of Colorado's 16,000 inmates are incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses and another 1000 for "contraband" violations while inside.

There's a cool $100 million that could be better spent. Leave $10 million for libraries. The rest can pave our beloved highways, although with so many sturdy SUVs in Colorado, I don't think we need to improve the roads.

There is a very real benefit to our liberal democratic society in freely providing access to all published knowledge, but without federal and state governments fostering the necessary relationships among many different kinds of libraries, the road to that access will get bumpier and bumpier.

Soon, only those who can afford SUVs will get there.