Bad News From MI As the Michigan House and Senate discuss next year’s budget, libraries across Michigan are bracing patrons for a possible 50 percent cut in funding.
If approved, the cuts will affect the quality of library services statewide, said Doreen Hannon, Director of the Salem-South Lyon District Library.
Plenty of fat to cut!
At first glance from their home page at http://salemsouthlyonlibrary.info/ the Salem-South Lyon District Library appears presently to be quite a wealthy library. They proudly boast of having upgraded to Microsoft Office 2007 and Internet Explorer 7. Their iBistro catalog appears remarkably enhanced.
Re:Plenty of fat to cut!
So being well-funded automatically means “plenty of fat”? Only struggling libraries are worthwhile? Maybe Salem-South Lyon is serving its community well and receives adequate funding as a result.
Your examples of fat make no sense. Educational copies of Office 7 are dirt cheap. Internet Explorer 7 is, um, free. Being up to date should not be considered an extravagance.
Looking at the library’s numbers, it’s reasonably well funded (but staff pay certainly isn’t magnificent), and clearly well used (nearly 17 circs per capita), in a community with good median household income and very low poverty rate. It is definitely not a wealthy library by my standards, but it’s also not a starving library.
But then, why am I responding to an anonymous comment?
Re:Plenty of fat to cut!
Media costs are a mere fraction of the cost to implement a suite of programs such as Office 2007 and Microsoft Explorer 7.
While the corporate world has not jumped on the Office 2007 bandwagon, this library found it prudent to do so.
Re:Plenty of fat to cut!
The public library I worked for got software from Microsoft at quite a discount if not free.
Techsoup is a wonderful resource that libraries, and other non-profits may use to locate software at steep discounts and often times free.
Another resource is the state purchasing cooperative and prison industries. Prison industries are prevented by law from selling inmate made goods (where inmates are not paid a comparable wage don’t bring up prison blues clothing) to other than non-profits and governmental entities.
When I worked at my library I suggested savings that exceeded my annual salary. It would behoove librarians and especially purchasing managers for libraries to become familiar with these programs so they can make the best use of their existing funding and be prepared for cuts.
Perhaps the fat cat library of which you speak simply has frugal and attentive administration.
Let’s think about the original story for a bit
The original story overstates something relatively unimportant and does not report on something potentially relatively important.
The cut is from the $12 million that the state of Michigan gives its public libraries. For a bit of context, let’s look at some summary data from Michigan.
If you mosey to the state summary data I have compiled at the NCLIS site from the NCES data, you can get the 2004 data—the latest we have. Things will have changed since then and I will take that up presently when I discuss trends.
These data report all funding for public libraries by state into five categories: income from local governments, from the state government, from the federal government, "other," and the total from all these sources. This story is about the component of library funding from the state and mentions the nominal $12 million of which $5 million was actually allocated. This story tells us the $5 million will be cut to $3.5 million. Of course, this audience wishes this were not so. However, let’s think about something a bit bigger.
In FY 2004, the libraries in Michigan had $12.3 million in revenues from the state while total revenues, from all sources, were $363 million. At that time, the amount of funding from the state for public libraries in Michigan was 3.6% of total funding. 90% came from local sources.
This article, then, is about a decline in that 3.6% of Michigan public libraries that came from the state. What about the 90%?
I suspect that the overall condition of public libraries in Michigan is worse than we can glean from this story because of what I suspect is going on with that 90%.
There is a longer article on recent public library trends in the hopper at Public Library Quarterly but a short version is on the Normative Data Project site: Recent Public Libary Trends and the gist of it is that I believe we can see that, overall, the national picture for public libraries is improving while individual states are having continuing budget woes.
Generally speaking, public library funding is a lagging economic indicator. When the economy does well, tax revenues go up, and more is spent on services like libraries. When the economy suffers, budgets for things like libraries suffer. Michigan’s economy has been in the doldrums for some time and, I bet, that 90% from local revenues has been under pressure over the state of Michigan. I would like to see an article about overall funding of public libraries in Michigan but, probably, that will have to await publication of the raw data unless an eagle-eyed LISNews reader can snag one. If the $363 million were hit at a rate similar to that seen in the state funding component of public library revenues, it would be a grim story, indeed.
I’m guessing that the later story posted on LISNews about libraries in Massachusetts (88% local funding) discusses local budget woes similar to what might be going on in Michigan.