Blatant Berry: Make ALA's Insurance Pay

The message to the American Library Association (ALA) Council from Rod Hersberger, ALA treasurer, was ominous. “It will come as no surprise that the value of ALA's long-term endowment continues to deteriorate.” The value of the endowment had declined by $4,380,355 as of October 16, a loss of just over 13 percent, to about $26 million. That was a much better performance than in many funds and indexes that measure the U.S. and world stock markets.

It is true that the endowment grew from just over $11 million in 2002 to $31 million at its peak. So it is unfair to blame anyone for a setback, least of all Hersberger. Others are facing much worse declines in investments. The damage will apparently continue. So let me suggest a new approach for ALA spending and investment.

A bit more than a year ago, I urged the organization to spend a significant portion of its endowment, then worth $31,432,147 (“The Endowment's Purpose,” Blatant Berry, LJ 10/15/07, p. 10), on an agenda that encouraged ALA to “more loudly, more effectively use all the media to explain to an increasingly skeptical public the essential value of libraries to society and to the communities in which they exist.”

It doesn't take a seer to predict that publicly supported libraries face exceedingly hard times as the economy declines. Yet, as always happens in tough times, library use is already on a dramatic upswing, and the strictures on libraries will only increase as they face both heavier demands and pressure to cut costs. It is a difficult, nearly impossible set of requirements to meet.

Despite ALA's many efforts to create, strengthen, and promote library advocacy efforts, it has achieved only marginal effectiveness, even when you add National Library Week to various other initiatives. The public is not hearing enough from ALA about the crucial job libraries are doing, about their importance in helping people get through hard times.

Now ALA has more than $4 million less with which to do that job and apparently no inclination to allocate any of its now $26 million endowment to do it. Yet the need for a strong, loud voice on behalf of public and tax support for libraries is greater today than it was when we raised the alarm in 2007. As we face continuing hard times, that need will grow.

“The endowment ultimately represents ALA's insurance against catastrophic circumstances,” said Hersberger and endowment trustee Robert Newlen (“ALA's 'insurance,'” Feedback, LJ 1/08, p. 12) in response to my 2007 call to spend more money on advocacy. If their view really applies, there is clear evidence of an economic catastrophe right now. Catastrophic budget cuts, staff cuts, and losses to library funding and to the investments of traditional donors to libraries mean deep trouble ahead.

It is easy to predict losses to investments on all fronts, and while more conservative investing, like that practiced by the officers and managers of the ALA fund, has minimized those losses as much as possible, more will be lost. In such times it seems only rational to put some remaining money into action to shore up support and create new revenue streams for libraries.

Rather than attempt to protect the cash and keep it locked up, it seems obvious that we should spend some of it to give aid to libraries being severely damaged by the economic crisis. ALA's “insurance” should be paying out now to help fight the disastrous decline in library support that seems imminent.

To some, this will seem like “throwing good money after bad.” I see it more as an investment—a provision, if you will, to get something for libraries before it is lost or taken by the market and ALA has nothing to show for it.