12/19/13

 

Question

 

Ann Reed (OR)

 

So good to see you all and have an informative data element debate this month.

 

I think you may be able to help out one of our hard-luck cases.   About 3 years ago,  Josephine County defunded the Josephine County Library.  It closed for several months.  At the urging of a newspaper editor, a nonprofit formed to run the library via an agreement with the County.  They open the library, and its 3 branches for free public use.  They get maybe $35,000 from the County for support, and the rest they fundraise by having people subscribe like NPR/PBS. If they toss in the towel, there will be no library service in that county.

 

They are gearing up for a districting campaign and want to say that they are the only county in our state where they are completely without library services.  (Yeah, there is a technicality there).

 

In any of your states, do you have a county without library service?   Do any of you have a county library run to a huge extent on pledges and donations?

 

To give a before and after – the Josephine County Lib. used to have 14 FTE and revenues of $1 million - $3 million.  Now it has 1 librarian, and 10 FTE and total revenue of $480K.

 

We appreciate your help as they make their case for stable funding.

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SDC Comments

 

Stacey Malek (TX)

 

Texas has six counties without public library service.  They may have small, private libraries but we don’t know about them because they don’t report to us.  We also have a couple of counties that contract with libraries in neighboring counties to provide library service.

 

We do not have any county established libraries run largely by donation, but we do have several non-profits with county contracts, like you describe, where they get some revenue from the county but are largely dependent on fundraising and donations.  Not an ideal situation, by any means.

 

I hope this helps.

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Bruce Pomerantz (MN)

 

Minnesota statutes require counties to provide public library service.  It’s also an unfunded mandate.

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Katrice Stewart (FL)

 

All Florida counties have some type of county public library service, however, there are some areas that are not served by a library (this is a small population – maybe 10,000 or less) pursuant to their interlocal agreements.  We also do not have any county systems run largely by donation, but we do have a few small, municipal libraries who get the majority of funding from a special taxing district for the municipality or through donations. 

 

Hope this helps. 

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Eleanor Bernau (NM)

 

New Mexico has 2 counties without official libraries.  Like Texas, we also have a number of all-volunteer libraries that are recognized by the state library and there are a few that choose not to be recognized.  There are 2 official county-wide library systems.

 

Close to 75% of our libraries are considered “rural.”  Many rely on a combination of funds: county support, FOL fund raisers, donations and grants.  There are also a number of non-profit libraries and several “potential” libraries in communities that are trying to start a public library.

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Jamie McCanless (WI)

 

Every Wisconsin county is (currently) a member of a regional public library system (17 systems comprised of 1 to 10 counties). None of our public libraries are funded primarily by fundraising and donations. I doubt we could call such an entity a public library.

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Rob Geiszler (VT)

 

Although non-profit libraries may be rare in other parts of the world, in New England and especially Vermont, these are a staple.  We call them “incorporated”, since they all are non-profit, corporate, 501(c)(3) entities. About 31% (57) of Vermont’s 183 public libraries fall into this category, although none of them are county systems.  Most of these  have service areas essentially defined by the municipal boundaries of the towns in which they are located.  With the exception of 2 of these incorporated libraries, they all receive some public (tax) funds. 

 

There’s a crazy quilt of support methods for these libraries.  About 20 or 25 of them are automatically included in their Town’s budget, as if a municipal department,  which budget is then approved or defeated in total on  Town Meeting Day. Another 20 or so are listed on the printed ballot as a separate initiative presented to the voters on Town Meeting Day.  5 or 6 are listed in the call to meeting and are approved by voice vote from the floor at Town Meeting.  The balance are simply moved and approved by voice vote, from the floor at Town Meeting. Decoupled from town government budgets, public library initiatives usually pass in the 60% range.  They rarely are defeated. All of these libraries, however, have to do fundraising, in addition to the tax support they receive, which ranges from as much as 80% of the total budget to as little as 25%.  From the perspective of Town residents, however, they always claim the library as “their” library, no matter how poor the tax support may be. 

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Dianne Carty (MA)

 

In Massachusetts public library service is municipally-based, not county-based.  We currently have one municipality (out of 351) which does not have a library or does not have an agreement with a neighboring town for library service.  The 258 residents use surrounding communities, but they do so based on the good will of their neighbor. 

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Bob Wetherall (DE)

 

All of our (3) counties have some sort of county library, but we also have many independent libraries outside the county structure.  All counties provide some sort of financial support to public libraries, but it works differently in each county.  We have no volunteer-only libraries or libraries which don't received tax support.  And there are no state residents without a home library.  We have statewide borrowing with a single ILS and every Delawarean with a public library card can borrow freely from any public library (and some academic/special libraries) in the state.

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Nicolle Steffen (CO)

 

Colorado has a crazy quilt of library jurisdictions, a few of which have overlapping boundaries. In spite of the overlap, the state still has all or part of approximately 19 counties that are not served by a public library. These are almost entirely large rural counties located in remote areas of the state. However, many of the folks in these counties don’t go without library service, instead they use their closest municipal or district library. As Dianne so aptly put it, these folks use the local library “based on the good will of their neighbors.”

 

All the “official” public libraries in Colorado are funded primarily through local tax dollars—mill levies and sales tax primarily. We do not have a public library operating under the “NPR model.”

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Michael Golrick (LA)

 

When I lived in Connecticut, I spent some time as the director of a public library which was a 501(c)3 and received support from the municipal budget. At one time, I remember being told that over 50% of the 190 public libraries in Connecticut used this model to one extent or another. (There are 169 cities and towns, no county government, no unincorporated areas, and some communities have more than one public library.) In Connecticut, these were referred to as “Association libraries” and the proportion of funding varied dramatically. In some ways it was more a governance issue than anything else.

 

In Louisiana, there is one 2-parish public library system, and one parish where service is provided by a number of public libraries. We are fortunate that every person in the state is entitled to public library service.

 

Good luck to the folks in Josephine County!

 

Happy New Year to all!