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Holt's
Perspectives
February 23, 2006: In
the News: Hogs and Libraries
Last
week’s edition of
American Libraries
Online contained a couple of those
“feel-good stories” intended by a
publication’s editors to make us snap our suspenders, smile
and say to our workmates, “Yep! Things are getting
better for libraries. The President likes us. Library
agencies are moving to IMLS, our favorite agency. And there’s
more money.”
Here’s
what the stories
said.
President Proposes Centralizing
Federal Library Programs within IMLS
President
Bush’s budget
for FY 2007 includes a proposal to integrate the National Center for
Education Statistics’ program for public and state library
statistics, along with the National Commission on Libraries and
Information Science, into the Institute of Museum and Library Services
beginning in 2008.
American Library
Association
Washington Office Executive Director Emily Sheketoff noted that moving
the statistics program from the Department of Education to
IMLS—which she said has a proven track record as an
“agency that cares deeply about us”—could
be an improvement [my emphasis] that ultimately helps libraries.
“The critical
issue is
making sure the NCES library surveys continue,” she [noted].
. . . IMLS said . . . . The president’s proposal
“is an opportunity to build a stronger, more powerful single
agency that will support and raise awareness for library, culture, and
information services.” 1
More
“feel good
news” followed.
President Increases Library
Funding in 2007 Budget
President
Bush’s
proposed 2007 budget . . . would boost funding for library programs at
the Institute of Museum and Library Services to $220.9 million, an
increase of nearly $10.3 million over FY 2006.
Program totals
include $171.5
million for state grants, an increase of $7.8 million; $25 million for
the Laura Bush 21st-Century Librarian Initiative, a $1.24-million
increase; $12.9 million for the National Leadership Grants for
libraries; $3.7 million for the Native American Library Services
program; and $7.8 million for administrative costs.
“Federal
support is
critical now, as libraries struggle to do more with less,”
said ALA President-Elect Leslie Burger. “These funds will
help libraries serve their communities by offering after-school
homework help, adult literacy, and ESL programs; expanding patron
access to the World Wide Web and new information technologies; securing
additional informational resources; and providing more library
materials and programs.” . . .
However, among 141
other federal
programs that President Bush wants to eliminate or cut significantly
are money for the Environmental Protection Agency’s network
of libraries for scientists, grants for safe and drug-free schools,
vocational education, and reading programs for jailed young people. 2
My
grand-father started his adult
life as an immigrant cowboy and spent nearly forty years as the second
owner of an 80-acre homestead farm, where he eked out a living raising
kids, corn, wheat, cattle and hogs. Grandpa taught all his
grand-kids many things. One of them was about taking money from any
government agency, especially one that you didn’t
control. Discussing that subject one day, he told me,
“When you eat at the public trough, watch out for the other
hogs. When you’re not looking, one of ‘em
will bite a big hunk out of your butt.”
With
that abiding philosophical
principle as my perspective, I perhaps saw the two stories a little
differently than the ALA reporter who clearly regarded them as good
news.
Although
I know the reality for
public libraries, my first reaction was one of almost unfathomable
shock at the small size of the federal numbers. $220 million
is not much when the proposed budget is $2.77 trillion.
Let’s
begin with a
simple comparison: The Cost of War – National Priorities
Project, which operates a website at http://nationalpriorities.org
has
a running calculator that shows (at the hour I inspected it) that the
Federal Government already has spent$242 billion to pay for the war in
Iraq. That, according to the calculator, has already cost the
taxpaying businesses and citizens of my city – just my city -
about $194 million dollars. Broken out, that would have paid
to send 25,978 St. Louis kids to Head Start or to pay 3,339 more
teachers, about the same total as all staff, including administrative
and custodial, now working in the city’s schools, to educate
our city’s kids.
The
last year I directed St.
Louis Public Library, our operating budget was $22 million, or 10% of
the entire federal budget to support libraries. The annual
budget for all public libraries generally is something over $8 billion,
so the federal total is about 3% of just the public library portion of
all library operating budgets. Add the annual operating
budgets for schools, universities and special libraries, and the
measurable percentage drops to incalculable unless your calculator
inserts a good many zeroes after the decimal that marks 1%.
(Both of my calculators showed the percentage as zero when I assigned
them the simple division task. The machines had the same
problem I did: the percentage was too small for their little mechanical
minds to handle).
Grandpa’s
comment about
hogs suggests an important first question. Did
ALA’s Washington Office have a major role in making the
budget decision that produced a $10.3 million increase, which is 5%,
about the rise in the annual cost of living market basket, from FY2006
to FY2007? Are WE “happy” with this
increase? Is this all that WE need? Or, is the figure
ridiculously low? Or, worse yet, given the minuscule amount
of federal funds in most library budgets, do most of us even care?
To
summarize the visual elements
of a government funding situation, let me verbally summarize a Thomas
Nast editorial cartoon mocking corrupt political decision making at the
turn of the 20th century. The cartoon question recast for our
institutions: Are American libraries sitting at the table
deciding which of the rich foods to grab a piece of and eat or are they
crawling around under it reaching cautious hands over the edge to
snatch an occasional morsel that has slipped off someone’s
plate but mostly scraping up the crumbs that drop on the floor?
The other
information reported
approvingly in the two stories is the transfer of two library
statistics agencies from the Department of Education to the Institute
for Museum and Library Services.
The
first troublesome aspect of
this story again concerns funding. Basically, the story
reports that the agencies are going to change the buildings where they
work. Nothing is said about how under-funded these agencies
have been not just for years but for decades. Statistical
information is worthless unless those whom are measured have reason to
pay attention to it. As one of the statisticians who works in
these agencies said to library colleagues at the San Antonio ALA
meeting, “If you want more up to date statistics and want to
have us do something with them, then write your senator or congressman
and get us more money to do the work.”
Second,
all government employees,
including librarians, know that danger exists when politicians start
“consolidating” agencies. Too often in
government, and the Federal Government is no exception,
“consolidation” means “cuts are
inevitable; the only question is when.” Any smart
administrator can tell you that consolidations either make things run
better – or they are used to cut the workforce.
Does moving NCES and NCLIS to IMLS help libraries?
The
third concern I have in
moving library statistics agencies to IMLS as that it continues the
process of libraries casting their financial lot with museums. .I was
worried when the federal government created this amalgamation, because
it seemed to me that IMLS was much more about support for
“cultural agencies” than it was about building a
brighter future for critical “educational agencies”
like public libraries.
My
concern has not been
alleviated. IMLS was supposed to mean more money for
libraries, but such funding has appeared in dribs and drabs.
And, the funding models all seem to me to be drawn from museums which I
regard as the real leaders in creating and building support for
IMLS: “Challenge grants,”
“museum-library collaborations,” and
“competitive grants” administered by state agencies
are not my idea of how to build sustained national funding for the
critical work that I think libraries continue to do, especially in a
time of international economic competitiveness when we find ourselves
exporting jobs that only educated workers can do to Ireland and
India.
When
the law changes, and
especially when budget changes occur, we need to look not only at that
event but where that change leads us. “What is the
intent of this organizational or funding change?”
“What is the end game?” My final question
in any discussion about library finances is “Are libraries
going to win or lose from what is happening now and what this action
says about the way we will have to make our future?
If
you want to know what those in
power really value, whether they run libraries or are elected officials
operating federal, state and local governments, watch the migration of
the dollar signs. Remember that governments at all levels are
in business for the primary purpose of gathering and allocating public
resources (i.e. taxes). Within government, when the dollar
signs move from one budget page to another, it means that tax revenues
are moving from department to department, from one agency to another,
and from one level of government to another. Whether you like it or
not, when those dollar signs move, you witness the highest public
expression of changing American values.
When
the hogs step up to the
government trough, libraries need to be represented at the meal, not
just sitting in some corner smiling or frowning as circumstances
change. If we are not involved in that process, we have no
funding recourse than to hope – to hope for more to eat and
to hope that some other hog does not bite out a big hunk of our
anatomy, crippling our ability to deliver the essential and critical
services that our citizens charged us to do.
It
is this perspective and the
fear that goes with it that makes me cautious about the two recent
feel-good stories from American
Libraries Online.
I’d be happy to have some other observer give me a more
optimistic view of the library funding future – at least so
far as obtaining more monetary help from the federal government that
looks after our national work force competitiveness and our economic
status in the world.
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©
2006, Library Leadership
Network, LLC.
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