Viewpoint: a Brilliant Cover-Up - October 2003
Ithaca Times
October 13, 2003
Janet Steiner, Library Director
One recent morning we opened our suggestion box and found this comment from one of our library users. "Despite all of the fiscal challenges and pressures, it's great to see how wonderful, warm and helpful all the staff continue to be. You are a treasure. Many thanks!"
Indeed, the library staff at the Tompkins County Public Library are exceeding all expectations as they pull together to compensate for the loss of ten positions over the past two years, as they cheerfully accept additional responsibilities, as they daily confront the challenge of serving more people, providing more answers and offering more books than ever before in our library's history.
In the profit making world, an institution which is as successful as the new library would reap more profits, which in turn would be re-invested through the hiring of more people, more inventory, more services, more open hours, plus a handsome return to the stockholders.
In the non-profit world, a successful organization may never be rewarded for increased service to its customers, may never be able to reward its wonderful, warm and helpful staff, and may never be able to reach its full potential. It is not an exaggeration to report that as library activity in the new library has dramatically increased over the past three years as predicted, the county appropriation has actually decreased.
Our response has been typical of many altruistic non-profits-we strive to do more with less and make the disappearance of services as invisible as possible. We are guilty of a brilliant cover-up that disguises the demise of library services occurring on a daily basis.
However, the erosion of an outstanding community asset is becoming more and more apparent. In 2003 the library reduced hours, including Sundays, reduced staff, reduced book-buying canceled magazine subscriptions,and continued to postpone the scheduled replacement of computers for both staff and users. In 2004, it will be impossible to offer even the most basic services which our community expects: convenient hours, access to up-to-date information, programs such as toddler storytime, and sufficient numbers of staff to ensure adequate customer service.
As the county legislature wrestles with its budget dilemma, it has chosen the library as one of the services to cut. Our request for sufficient funds for payroll and benefits for 2004 was reduced to a level which will require more staff lay-offs. Although the Library Board of Trustees has not yet identified which positions will be eliminated, we expect another loss of from 3 - 6 positions on top of the ten which are already gone.
The impact of this reduction will reverberate throughout the community as exceptionally talented and well trained library staff members are lost, as services like the Health Information Center cease to exist, as public programming is curtailed, as our ability to be community partners with other organizations is compromised, as Internet access for researchers and those without computers deteriorates, and as the library is unable to remain open for the state mandated minimum number of hours.
Public libraries level the playing field between the information haves and the information have-nots. Information is power and access to the rich collection of the library and our on-line resources is critical if we expect our citizens to be well informed. This is the cornerstone of a democracy, and once we decide that public library services are optional, not essential, we have crossed a line that speaks volumes about community priorities.
If a library were nothing more than a building filled with books, we would only need a custodian to turn on the heat and the lights and a security guard to make sure the assets remain intact. Operating a library with "skeleton staff", as we have been advised to do, results in a parody of what our library is and what our community wants it to be. These cuts threaten our core services to an untenable extent.
Today, our library finances resemble a house of cards, precariously dependent upon private philanthropy, (already the highest percent of the budget of any comparable NYS public library) one-time grants, the success of the Friends booksale, a myriad of fees and fines, and state aid. When our one source of stable and secure funding-the county-which provides 70% of the library's revenues, becomes insufficient and insecure, it shakes our foundation and ensures that sooner or later, our brilliant cover-up will be exposed.
