Madeline Douglass writes \”Roger Sween on the Minnesota State Library Smackdown
June 4, 2002
The Minnesota Department of Children, Families and Learning (CFL)
has among its statutory requirements the responsibility for state level
library services and development. As with its predecessor, the
Minnesota Department of Education, such responsibility has been
delegated to and administered by a unit in the department for nearly 100
years. Currently this unit is called Library Development and Services
(LDS). Every state has a state library agency such as LDS, that is
until now. In three weeks, LDS will be gone. How then will CFL address
the following:
Madeline Douglass writes \”Roger Sween on the Minnesota State Library Smackdown
June 4, 2002
The Minnesota Department of Children, Families and Learning (CFL)
has among its statutory requirements the responsibility for state level
library services and development. As with its predecessor, the
Minnesota Department of Education, such responsibility has been
delegated to and administered by a unit in the department for nearly 100
years. Currently this unit is called Library Development and Services
(LDS). Every state has a state library agency such as LDS, that is
until now. In three weeks, LDS will be gone. How then will CFL address
the following:
Minnesota Statutes 134.31 Department of children, families, and
learning; library responsibilities.
Subdivision 1. The state shall, as an integral part of its
responsibility for public education, support the provision of library
service for every citizen, the development of cooperative programs for
the sharing of resources and services among all libraries, and the
establishment of jointly operated library services at a single location
where appropriate.
Subd. 2. The department of children, families, and learning shall give
advice and instruction to the managers of any public library or to any
governing body maintaining a library or empowered to do so by law upon
any matter pertaining to the organization, maintenance, or
administration of libraries. The department may also give advice and
instruction, as requested, to post-secondary educational institutions,
state agencies, governmental units, nonprofit organizations, or private
entities. It shall assist, to the extent possible, in the establishment
and organization of library service in those areas where adequate
services do not exist, and may aid in improving previously established
library services. The department shall also provide assistance to school
districts, regional library systems, and member libraries interested in
offering joint library services at a single location.
Subd. 3. The department may provide, for any library in the state,
books, journals, audiovisual items, information services or resource
materials it deems appropriate and necessary and shall encourage the
sharing of library resources and the development of interlibrary
cooperation.
Subd. 4. The department shall collect statistics on the receipts,
expenditures, services, and use of the regional public library systems
and the public libraries of the state. It shall also collect statistics
on all activities undertaken pursuant to sections 134.31 to 134.35.
As of Tuesday morning, June 4, 2002, Assistant Commissioner Ken
Hasledalen informed six LDS staff, including Director Joyce Swonger,
that their positions are eliminated as of June 28. Three other staff,
responsible for state and federal grant payments, will be reassigned to
Tom Melcher, Manager of the Program Finance Division. The Minnesota
Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, operating out of
Faribault, will be placed directly under Hasledalen, whose
responsibility is Management Services.
These changes reduce what were the overall functions of the state
library agency to grant administration. In so doing, top CFL
administrators acted alone; they did not consult with the affected
agency staff and they did not inform any of their library constituents.
In unilaterally abolishing the state library agency, CFL abandons two
areas of agency service. One is its own departmental library; the other
is the position that the state plays in public library development and
fostering cooperation among all libraries within the state.
Presumably, CFL administrators made these cuts to reduce
departmental expenditures by the 10% requested by the Governor, and they
have done so by radically reducing one whole section. So what is at
stake? What can we look for as of July 1?
The state will have no designated agency for library leadership
and coordination. Without a state library agency and state library
director, Minnesota will lose its eligibility for federal library funds,
currently at $2.6 million a year. When Congress funds the Literacy
through School Media program at a level to require state administration,
who will administer it? Federal programs require state level plans.
The 2003-2007 plan for the Library Services and Technology Act is due
July 30. How will it get in?
The state will lose many current services dependant on federal
funds. This means no contract for backup interlibrary loan and
reference service to public libraries. Tens of thousands of requests
will go unfilled. Also gone will be the support to deliver education to
front line library workers throughout the state who lack library degrees
and cannot afford to travel to obtain them.
There are no plans for the library science collection at LDS.
This source of professional literature, unique in the state, and
excellently served by its staff will no longer be available. The
\”librarians\’ librarian,\” Darlene Arnold, who anticipates the information
needs of her colleagues throughout the state and meet those needs, will
be gone. The ability to keep currently informed and answer problems
that librarians, library students, trustees, library architects, public
officials, and many others face will be weakened, made more time
consuming and costly.
LDS is midway in assessing the status of school library media
services to meet student\’s learning needs and furnish skills and
resources that address the graduation standards. Is this effort to be
aborted? LDS is also midway in assessing its own structural position
for achieving functions common to state library agencies throughout the
country. A next steps assembly, representative of the library
community, is supposed to meet at the end of the month, just as the
agency sunsets.
None of this speaks to seemingly cruel and highhanded way in which
dedicated and long-term employees of the department have been summarily
dismissed.
I cannot believe this is what Minnesotans want. I cannot believe
that this is what budget-minded officials and legislators intend.
But when CFL officials act without concern for librarians or the
public served by libraries and fail to communicate in any mutual way, I
have no alternative but to share my concern with the state as a whole.
Roger Sween
2524 Oriole Circle
Red Wing MN 55066-4103
rdsween[at]redwing.net
Roger Sween was a library consultant and grant administrator at Library
Development and Services from May 1984 through June 2000. \”
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