The Library Leadership Network

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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