Public Testimony Submitted for Spring 1999 Hearings
|
Other Spring 1999 Hearings
|
Theresa Adams, Director, Clinton-Essex-Warren-Washington School Library System and
President-Elect, School Library Systems Association of New York
Herb Alfasso, member of the board, Southern Adirondack Library System
Richard V. Anglin, Director, Ramapo Catskill Library System
-Jeff Berkman
Steve Black, Reference, Instruction, and Serials Librarian, Neil Hellman Library, The College of Saint Rose, Albany
Central Libraries Association of the State of New York
(Jeff Cannell, speaking on their behalf)
-Joshua Cohen
Betty L. Collins, Chair of the Clinton-Essex School Library System Council and
School Library Media Specialist, Cumberland Head School
Pamela G. Daves, Upper Hudson Library System Board Trustee
Harry Dutcher, Director, Saratoga Springs Public Library
Loretta Ebert, Director of Libraries and Information Services, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy;
and founding member, Pi2
-Mary Beth Farr
The Friends of The New York State Library, Inc.
(Zebulon S. Robbins, Jr., Vice President, speaking on their behalf)
Eva H. Gemmill, Library Volunteer, Poestenkill Library
Susan L. Hauer, Director, Town of Esopus Port Ewen Library
Warren G. Hawkes, New York State Nurses Association, Latham
Nancy M. Heller, Director of Library Services, Schenectady County Community College
and Trustee, Capital District Library Council
Malcolm K. Hill, Director, Mid-York Library System, Utica
-Mary-Alice Lynch
-Assemblywoman Naomi C. Matusow
New York State Association of Library Boards
(Parry D. Teasdale, President, speaking on their behalf)
Michael O'Connor, Director, Southern Adirondack Library System
Veronica Pastecki, Chairperson, Library Media Department, City School District of Albany
Josephine Piracci, Director, Shenendehowa Public Library
Public Library System Directors Organization
(presented by Hemwatie Jaipershad, Director, Upper Hudson Library System
on behalf of Arthur Weeks, Chair, PULISDO)
-Mary Ratzer
Marge Rizzo, School Library Media Specialist, O'Rourke Middle School, Burnt Hills
-Theresa Ronning
-Ann H. Ross
Gail Alter Sacco, Director, Voorheesville Public Library
Karen G. Schneider, Director, Brunswick Community Library
Jean K. Sheviak, Executive Director, Capital District Library Council, Albany
-Maureen Spada
Parry D. Teasdale, Phoenicia, NY
-Barbara Tepper
Eric Trahan, Director, Canajoharie Library and Art Gallery
-Keith Washburn [NYLA]
Susan H. Zappen, Chair, Capital District Library Council Coordinated Collection Development Committee
Theresa Adams
Director, Clinton-Essex-Warren-Washington School Library System and
President-Elect, School Library Systems Association of New York
Strong school library media programs enable all students to learn. The old quiet library with few students has been replaced with a full, moving body of students, who together with teachers and library media specialist, engage in learning activities that challenge them to inquire, listen, read, sort through masses of information, seek advice, work in teams, write and discuss their conclusions, and generate projects in a variety of formats. This is as true of second graders working on complex problem solving as high school seniors, advancing to careers and higher education which require mastery levels of information literacy and technology skills. The school library is the one place in the school where all children can have equity of access to books and information over a number of years and with a library media specialist who knows and guides the student personally. This should include online access to electronic texts of newspapers and magazines from a wide selection, and instruction on their use. This should include the best of literature and non-fiction appropriate to the students' age and maturity. School library media programs address the special needs and learning styles of all children in a variety of ways to make it possible for all children to learn. School library media programs, staffed by certified library media specialists and trained clerical staff, enable all students to meet higher learning standards.
We urge the Regents Commission to recommend that the Board of Regents support all initiatives that guarantee adequate funding of school library media programs, school library systems, electronic resources and certified library media specialists.
Increased library materials aid plus local funding put quality books, good literature and needed information into the hands of children and families. Raising learning standards has raised the level of expectation for State and local support to the instructional program, curriculum-supportive resources in the library media center, professional development of staff and collaboration between teaching staff and library media specialist. Sadly, the allocation of funding in public and non-public schools frequently fails to reach the library media program, or is at best sporadic. Even the proposed $6 per pupil library materials aid, if funded, doesn't begin to keep up with the average price of a book at $25. For many children and families, the school library is the only library to which they have regular access. Research supports that strong, well funded school library media programs, with ample, current and relevant reading materials directly impact student achievement.
It is essential that the Regents Commission recommend increasing school library materials aid from the current level of $6 per pupil to adequately support NYS Learning Standards and the Commissioner's challenge for children to read 25 books a year or the equivalent across all subject areas.
Certified School Library Media Specialists help raise reading scores in the elementary school. School library media specialists are trained librarians and teachers, knowledgeable of curriculum and instruction, student learning styles, the elements of research and ethical use of information, specialists in literature and authors. In many schools, the library media specialist serves as both a reading consultant and a curriculum advisor. Certified school library media specialists at the elementary level effect higher student reading scores, according to the research. Long-term interaction with a certified library media specialist greatly increases the likelihood that children will develop a life-long love of books, learning and library use beyond the school. Commissioner Mills is calling upon all New Yorkers to help raise reading scores in the elementary school, and yet library media specialists are only required in secondary schools.
The Regents Commission needs to recommend that a certified library media specialist be required for every elementary, middle and secondary school.
School library systems provide equitable services to the over 5,000 school libraries in New York. What a wonderful resource we have in school library systems! You've probably heard how the 42 school library systems pooled a small amount of resources to produce a statewide contract, training and technical assistance that has enabled almost every elementary and secondary school library in New York State to access hundreds of quality online magazines and newspapers. This service would have cost schools over $5,000 per library. School library systems represent a significant contribution to resource sharing, as shown in the annual statistics of items loaned. School library systems understand and promote the vital educational mission of public and non-public schools within the statewide library, provide high quality professional development for library staff and assist schools in the library automation process. School libraries need school library systems to ensure that all students have the same high level of access to library books and information in the over 5,000 schools of New York State.
The Regents Commission needs to recommend adequate funding of school library systems, including money for electronic databases and upgrading online access statewide, to guarantee equitable library services for all students in New York State.
I have told you what is needed to make school library media programs a strong component of the statewide library network. Now I'd like you to listen to the words of School Library System Chairperson and building level library media specialist from Cumberland Head Elementary School in the Beekmantown School District, Mrs. Betty Collins.
Herb Alfasso, member of the board
Southern Adirondack Library System
I am Herb Alfasso, currently a member of the board of the Southern Adirondack Library System (SALS). I am also a past member of the board of the Shenendehowa Public Library in Clifton Park and was its president when we imposed restrictions on library use to nonresidents of Clifton Park. My goal is to see those restrictions -- and restrictions from all libraries -- removed while not hurting the taxpayers who support those libraries.
I'm retired now, but in my career -- over 33 years in State Government -- I saw how changes in law and in funding were made, and in some cases I participated in making those changes. They were in other areas like child support and transportation but the same principals applied and I want to pass them on to the Commission.
It's obvious that if the State is going to assure good public library service to everyone in the State it will have to provide much more funding than it now provides. Nothing compared to school aid but several times what the State now gives to support construction and maintenance of public libraries. Here I'm saying nothing you haven't heard before. How you make the case for such funding and propose to do it may determine whether it gets approval from the people and ultimately the Governor and the Legislature. I suggest two elements be part of your proposals.
One, they should be simple and easy to understand. I'm referring both to the explanation of why money is needed and how to give it to the libraries. Complicated formulas govern school aid but the principal of State aid for schools is now well established. For libraries substantial State funding will be new. Therefore, I suggest that you keep the proposal as simple as possible even at the risk of it resulting in some inequities that could have been reduced with a more complex approach.
Two, I suggest that the money go through existing structures such as the State Library and library systems. Avoid creating new entities to carry out these jobs. Don't be accused of creating more bureaucracy when there are good ones in place. I assure you that the problems of public libraries do not lay at the feet of the State Library or the library systems, except perhaps that they haven't been more effective in getting more State aid.
Thank you for the opportunity to express my views.
Richard V. Anglin, Director
Ramapo Catskill Library System, Middletown
The Regents decision to enforce the provisions of 90.3 that relate to fees for library service paid by individuals is a wise one. It provides an expanded definition of what public library service is.
We in RCLS will have an opportunity to enter into contracts with untaxed municipalities in this next year and provide library services to all residents of a community, without discrimination, in a public setting.
Our experience in working with 90.3 though, brings up several additional concerns:
Why are the standards for chartering public libraries so minimal?
Why is population size and the ability of a community to support a library adequately not a prime concern before a public library is chartered?
For older communities, how can they move into the 21st century and add automation and improve the quality of staff training unless the standards rise and they begin to consolidate with other libraries so there can be a better level of service.
Why not begin by making the minimum requirement for hours of operation to include four evenings a week, plus Saturday and Sunday hours. The number of hours open could be adjusted to fit this schedule which would provide access to all of the public library's patrons but should at least be 50 hours per week which means staffing needs to be sufficient to do this.
Require that libraries gain at least a 50% registration of library patrons in their communities and provide electronic access to the collections of all libraries in their system.
Require that each library offer Internet access to its patrons and work with its system to offer a minimum number of public access points in the library.
Require libraries to have a 56K minimum connection to the Internet.
It is good to increase the funding to systems but the libraries they serve should also be required to improve their services locally and some system funding should be tied to this local growth.
To this end, we should make information more readily available to trustees of member libraries about the ways in which funding might increase if they contracted with other areas for service or helped create special districts that were contract library districts. There ought to be financial incentives for libraries to do this.
Steve Black
Reference, Instruction, and Serials Librarian
Neil Hellman Library, The College of Saint Rose, Albany
As a librarian at the College of Saint Rose, I wish to advocate for the greatest possible New York State funding for online bibliographic databases. State payment for a broad array of bibliographic databases will give more equitable access to information to the citizens of New York, and free up funds for libraries to buy more books and journals.
At The College of Saint Rose, a significant portion of our materials budget goes for subscriptions to bibliographic databases. Still, we are unable to provide our students all the indexes they could use to pursue their academic interests. Although our students and faculty are our primary clientele, other citizens can and do take advantage of our library's collections and services. Statewide access to a full range of online indexes would benefit not only our patrons, but also all New Yorkers.
The Health Reference database from the NYS Library through LSTA funds is very useful. I would love to see more databases, full-text and otherwise, made available in the same way.
Jeff Cannell, for The Central Libraries Association of the State of New York
Our Vision
All citizens of New York State are able to satisfy their information needs by having access to a central library that provides an extensive, in-depth collection of print and non-print material, electronic resources, and a customer focused staff with specialized research skills. These central libraries will:
- Operate up-to date facilities that incorporate the latest technologies and exceed ADA standards for accessibility
- Possess sufficient numbers of librarians with extensive subject expertise to answer every informational query, even those that are most complex, in a timely manner
- Offer extensive training opportunities for the public and staff of other libraries to make the most effective use of electronic information resources including the Internet
- Have sufficient quantities of multi-media Internet capable workstations to meet the needs of the community and the region
- Achieve the Leader Level of the New York State Electronic Doorway Library program in Infrastructure, Content and Training
- Be recognized by the public, our funding authorities and other libraries as unique and essential contributors to the economic and educational well being of the citizens of New York State
Our Mission
The Central Libraries of New York State are specially designated public libraries within the statewide network that provide in-depth, extensive collections of print, non-print and electronic resources and staff with specialized skills, in order to meet the research needs of citizens and libraries within their regions. Central libraries facilitate access to traditional library materials and electronic resources including the Internet, by assisting citizens conducting their own research and by responding to reference queries received via "in-person" visits, telephone, fax, interlibrary loan and e-mail.
Our Key Goals
Access to information and materials -- Central libraries will be the first points of access, after local libraries, for documents, books, periodicals and electronic resources that satisfy the information requirements of citizens and other public libraries. Central library collections (print, non-print and electronic) will be recognized as invaluable regional and statewide assets.
Professional expertise -- Customer-focused central library reference specialists will possess subject knowledge as well as the research and technical skills necessary to assist citizens and member libraries to locate information. Staff will add value to the research process by developing print and electronic pathfinders on topics of critical importance to the community and will field reference queries via phone, interlibrary loan, in-person visits, and e-mail.
Technology and Training -- Central libraries will be recognized for their expertise and experience in implementing and piloting new technologies including digitization of special collections and the development of electronic books. Central libraries will have the physical infrastructure and staff necessary to empower citizens to take full advantage of electronic resources and the Internet. This will involve one-on-one and formal group instruction. Central libraries will train other librarians in the region to use electronic resources to meet the needs of their patrons, and will develop web pages for remote access to their collections and services. Central Libraries will all have attained the Leader Level in the New York State Electronic Doorway Library Program (EDL).
Community & Statewide Goals -- Central libraries, by virtue of their locations in the State's principal economic centers and their provision of cost effective access to critical information for all citizens and businesses, will play a key role in contributing to the economic revitalization of New York State. They also will provide information services to support quality of life initiatives that require an educated and informed citizenry.
Funding -- Central libraries will be able to support their unique role by having sufficient financial resources to provide high quality services. These resources will include a blend of local tax dollars and state aid, supplemented by federal funds and private grants. Local funding will provide a framework for partnership with the State and will show evidence of local commitment but will not unfairly burden the local community. The state aid portion of Central library operating budgets should be increased to at least 40% and state aid should be targeted to ensure that every central library is able to attain the Leader Level of the State's Electronic Doorway Library program. State construction aid should be increased to at least $10 million per year with a significant portion targeted to Central libraries to ensure first rate facilities.
Betty L. Collins, Chair of the Clinton-Essex School Library System Council and
School Library Media Specialist, Cumberland Head School
I love libraries. I always have. My earliest memory of doing something -- going somewhere -- by myself -- was going to the public library in Caribou, Maine. I lived at least 1 mile away from that library - in the country. So it was a real hike for a small child. How did I even know about that library? I do not ever remember any kind of reading guidance from any teacher. There were no school libraries at all -- no friendly librarian to meet you with a smile -- no classroom libraries. I was born into a family of readers and storytellers. My grandparents never put out their bedside lamps without reading from their Zane Grey westerns first...the same westerns that my Dad taught himself to read by. I was fortunate. They were fortunate. We did not have the distractions that today's families have: hockey, soccer and other formalized sports activities, video games, the internet, dance classes, TV programs that dull the mind. Many families cannot make a commitment to 15 minutes of reading a night with their child.
I never had the privilege of a library media specialist to feed my appetite for stories -- all kinds of stories. I was on my own to discover the Box Car Children -- how I loved that book -- children who could survive without adults!! Wow! Could that really happen? All those Nancy Drews -every one-crawling on my hands and knees -- head bent sideways -- reading all those titles -- branching out into the slightly bigger room and finding Jane Eyre, Little Women, Wuthering Heights. Oh, it was wonderful. And I didn't make a peep! Silence -- absolute silence -- after all Mrs. Bearse sang in the church choir.
So how is it different for the Cumberland Head children? All 650 of them -- and the 50 some teachers that teach them each day? I see my school library as basically the MAIN library in my children's lives and their teachers' lives. Beekmantown itself has no public library.
I do my best to turn every child onto books ... I know what a difference books -- stories -- can make in a person's life. I share my joy and love of books with the children in very personal ways....when I see a book that I know that a certain child would love, I do my best to get it for the library ...we have a first grader who is obsessed with anything that has to do with Egypt and mummies. Can you imagine how puffed up he feels when I bring him a book -- hand delivered -- to his classroom-on Ice Age mummies? A book that he can read himself! I offer as much of this kind of service as I can squeeze into a day.
I do not have automation -- most of my clerk's time is spent making out lists of overdue books -- I am most grateful for the telephone that I have at my disposal because of Theresa Adams and the School Library System ... and Norpac, the regional library catalog on CD-ROM, which allows me to interlibrary loan many books ... again, because of the wonderful service offered by the School Library System. Through the School Library System I have the opportunity to review new books and they become part of my library collection.
My principal recognizes how important it is to have a wonderful selection of books available for the children to borrow. She makes money available for me to buy paperbacks of the latest children's literature from the Scholastic and Trumpet book orders. I am able to get multiple copies of titles so that I can have lunch with groups of children where we all are reading the same title and discussing the book. There are six 5th grade boys reading The Giver with me ... what an experience for them ... what a privilege for me to be part of the discussions -- you all know the expression "Don't judge a book by its cover" ....well, that is true with children also ... I did not think that one of the boys would be able to really read this level book .... he is reading the book and he is more than holding up his end of the discussion ... he wants to be part of that group. I hope that they all remember this time that we spend together and that they continue to be readers all the days of their lives.
Earlier in the year I read Little Bear stories with a group of first grade girls ... at their request. Now one of them is having a lunch date with two pre-first students and is "teaching" them how to read. Ten second graders formed a Magic Tree House group that ate lunch in the library on Fridays. They read 17 different titles. There are 18 third graders reading the Narnia series and at least that many fourth graders who are reading them, too. There are no extrinsic motivations being offered. These are children who love to read and TALK!
What about the children who do not get to be in a reading group with me? What do I do for them? Well, New York State says that all children are to read 25 books each a year. Kathy Miller's fifth graders have read at least 250 books this year together. Some were group reads, some by the teacher, and the rest by themselves. Fu Fu can read 3-5 novels a day if she has them .... she can tell you in detail whatever it is you would like to know about the books ... Julie is addicted to books. I recently took their class to the CEF Library System for a tour of the home of the Bookmobile and then next door to the Plattsburgh Public Library where library cards were waiting for them all. Julie had the video To Kill a Mockingbird in her hand. She asked the librarian if there was a book to go with the video. Julie took out the book and left the video behind. On Tuesday morning she told me that she was on page 150 -- when the aunt comes to visit. Was she excited to go to the Public Library and Bookmobile? Yes! All of the children checked out various materials. Will they use the bookmobile schedules that they were given? Yes, I think that those children who live close enough to walk across a field, to ride their bikes down the road to the nearest bookmobile stop will do so this summer.
My most exciting classroom work is with those teachers who dare to collaborate -- to share what they want to work on next -- when they tell you ahead of time you can plan ahead together. My school does a school-wide Arts and Humanities Project each year. This year it was South America. Not only did I find the age-appropriate materials for the teachers who collaborated but I found resource people to come in and talk with the students. My favorite was the Dean of Arts and Sciences from SUNY Plattsburgh. She has done extensive research on bats and caves and the Amazon. She came in after the students had worked with numerous materials from the library: books, videos, and classroom projects. I wish that you could have heard all those second and third graders sharing their knowledge with her. Her comment at the end was "I have never shown my slides to such a well-informed audience!"
Now we are dealing with the fallout from the ELA test for fourth graders. Do we need to improve? Yes. Do we need to do some things differently? Yes. Do I need to be part of these changes? Yes. Will I be part of these changes? Yes. Because I know the value of all the expertise that I have acquired -- my life experiences, my year at SUNY Albany getting my MLS, my internship with Mary Ratzer, my in-service training with Theresa Adams at the School Library System, and all of my little friends and big friends at Cumberland Head School who tell me each day that I do make a difference in their lives. I had to learn to dare to say "I know that I can help you with this project to make it more relevant and meaningful for all involved. Let's be successful together."
Thank you for this opportunity to share a bit of my professional life with you. Maybe by working and planning together we can make a difference in the literate lives of all the people in New York State. We need each other to be strong!
Pamela G. Daves
Upper Hudson Library System Board Trustee
1. STATUTORY CHANGES IN ARTICLE 5, PART II ARE NEEDED
A. ASSURED, TIMELY STATE AID FOR LIBRARIES
1) SUBSTANTIALLY INCREASE AMOUNT FOR CONSTRUCTION
2) DOUBLE LOCAL AID TO 62 CENTS/CAPITA
B. REGIONALIZED LIBRARY DISTRICTS/SERVICE AREAS
1) STATE-WIDE, COUNTY-WIDE, INTERCOUNTY AND SUB-COUNTY MERGERS
C. INCENTIVES FROM STATE TO ENCOURAGE LOCAL SUPPORT
2. STATE-WIDE LIBRARY DELIVERY SERVICE
A. IN ACCORD WITH INTERNET/TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES
3. THE GRAYING OF THE PRESENT LIBRARIANS
A. NEED FOR CONTINUING EDUCATION/TRAINING
B. DIVERSION OF LIBRARIANS-TO-BE INTO INFORMATIONAL TECHNOLOGY
C. NEED FOR QUALITY SALARIES AND BENEFITS
4. REVISIT 90.3 IN THE FUTURE
Harry Dutcher, Director
Saratoga Springs Public Library
Can help New York’s Public Libraries Without Spending a lot of Money
- Get us a lawyer! A specialist on library law is vitally needed in the Education Department, ideally in the Division of Library Development. The most important thing the state does for us (and to us!) at the local level is developing the laws and regulations under which we operate.
- Develop uniform legislation allowing citizen action to establish special library tax districts, and in general support and expand efforts that increase the power of citizens to establish and raise funds for public libraries at the local level. In commenting on library tax district legislation, legal counsel in the comptroller’s office has repeatedly called for a uniform library district law.
- Develop a comprehensive orientation program for all the members of the Board of Regents explaining how public libraries and public library systems are established, governed and funded in our state. One small example illustrating why I feel this is necessary. Less than ½ of one percent of our budget comes from state financial aid, but I constantly find that citizens, legislators, and members of the Board of Regents I have spoken with assume this number to be similar to that of State support for public education.
- Maintain support for public library systems. I see nothing to be gained by undoing the library systems we have built over the past half-century, only to replace them with various schemes that will ultimately provide similar services. Library systems benefit all New Yorkers, but I believe they are particularly important in the rural, sparsely populated portions of the state. The State’s "Libraries 2000" initiative completely ignores system funding, which I hope is not an indication of long-term priorities.
- Publish collected public library statistics electronically in a timely fashion.
- The Regents have made it clear that they oppose charging individuals for library borrowing privileges. Given this, intersystem as well as intrasystem charges should be prohibited. The current situation can allow neighboring libraries to charge each other’s patrons (Albany could charge Schenectady, Westchester County libraries can charge residents of the Bronx, and so forth). This is just the sort of regulation that makes government look foolish. I doubt many members of the Board of Regents know where system boundaries are, and 99% plus of the public certainly does not. Can I, for example, sell a card to a resident of our system area who also owns property in another system?
- When considering public library service, always keep in mind that at many public libraries 40% or more of loans made are children’s materials. If use by junior and high school age students are considered, it is fair to say that use by pre-school and school age children accounts for the majority of use in the vast majority of public libraries. Public libraries are frequently the first government educational institution a child experiences, and I think we can all agree that this experience should be a great one. A life-altering one. Yet we are facing a growing, critical shortage of librarians specializing in youth services. I ask the Regents to take steps to deal with this shortage, and do recognize the great resources our public libraries are for New York’s children.
- Some may disagree, but I believe the issue of Free Direct Access, given the funding inequities currently existing, to be the biggest problem facing New York’s public libraries. For too long we have clung to the principle of universal service and ignored the quality of that service. To make any real change in our public libraries, this issue must be dealt with fairly. Funding patterns must change to reflect our shifting, mobile populations or quality library service will become increasingly difficult to provide. I have included testimony I presented at the May 1997 hearings held by the Assembly Committee on Libraries and Educational Technology on this issue. Little has changed since that date, and I ask you each to read this testimony.
Loretta Ebert, Director of Libraries and Information Services, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy; and founding member, Pi2
My name is Loretta Ebert. I am Director of Libraries and Information Services at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY , and the founding member of Pi2 (Partners in Information and Innovation), a library consortia of approximately 50 mostly small to mid-sized private academic institutions. I am also here as a spokesperson for the New York State Consortium of Consortia, a voluntary board of leaders of library groups of all types in New York State. In addition, I serve as an advisory group member for Nylink (until recently known as the SUNY/OCLC Network), and on the Board of Trustees of the Capital District Library Council. All of these bodies have independently submitted written proposals to this commission for review, so I will attempt only to present some common threads.
First of all, I would like to thank you for holding these hearings and inviting participation from the library community. I am here today to share with you my thoughts about one of the most exciting things that's happened in the library community in this state in recent years. A new energy has been generated by libraries joining together in the name of collaboration.in groups generally called "library consortia."
These come in many flavors, but they share in a common goal: making information resources equally accessible to all their constituents, and doing it in the most cost effective manner.
The diversity of New York State's libraries is unparalleled in any other state and offers us an opportunity to build a model of national excellence. Yet we have seen other states, notably Ohio, Georgia, and Illinois setting the standards instead.
This is in part, I believe, due to historical efforts in NYS to perceive and build library resources in relatively isolated segments. The result has been a competitive funding environment which has been counter-productive. Libraries in NY recognize a fundamental need to collaborate with one another and are not well-served by selective support of the special interests of any one segment. When one segment is neglected, or supported, demands across all libraries increase.
For example, higher education and academic libraries in New York Sate support the economic, social and political health of this state, as well as its educational objectives -- and we can do an even better job when we collaborate across all multi-type library systems. I believe this has also been the key strategy in those states, mentioned above, where both public and private, large and small, segments of the library community leverage their individual resources by collaborating in new ways on the state level.
Recognizing the power of statewide cooperation, and in the absence of any formal mechanism, concerned library leaders in NYS joined together about two years ago to create the NYCofC (New York Consortium of Consortia). This endeavor took the vision of statewide collaboration to the next level. To be sure, there were formal agencies and library consortia that operated effectively while serving the interests of various populations. But the advent of electronic databases and full-text access to information online opened up a whole new world of opportunity for sharing resources on a state-wide level. The location of the physical material was no longer an issue, as it had been in the print environment and new pricing models based on users rather than content, allowed for even the smallest and leanest of libraries to participate in purchasing the new electronic resources.
For the first time, librarians from every corner of this state's library community took seats at the same table. It's been extraordinary to see the librarian from a public or school system in a small rural library seated at the same table as one of the top librarians from a major urban research library, interacting and sharing in efforts to promote library services for all state citizens. In just a short period of time, this group of two dozen librarians has congealed. We negotiate, as one, to get the best value on the dollar for access to electronic collections. We also meet with vendors and advise them on market needs and pricing realities.
Libraries understand the inevitable connections between stimulating the minds of our children, the curiosity of our young adults, the support of our research minds and the cross-fertilization of research and economic development between our institutions of higher education and our private or commercial enterprises.
We increasingly hear that higher education must become more accountable to society, to its public responsibilities and relationships, and to be less self-indulgent. If we want to find a way to articulate this imperative in real actions, it would be hard to find a more logical and natural vehicle than shared access to online information - information acquired, made accessible, generated and archived for the citizens of New York State by a consolidated effort of all the state's libraries.
To these ends, the New York Consortium of Consortia applauds the Regents Commission and wishes to join you in achieving favorable outcomes.
We ask that you :
- Formally endorse and support the NYCofC as a statewide constitutency-based advisory board, especially in building a state-wide network of electronic information resources for all citizens.
- Provide funding for a "Core Collection" of electronic resources available to all New Yorkers through their libraries, homes, school and work.
- Fund full-time positions at the New York State Office of General Services to be devoted to negotiating state-wide contracts on behalf of all eligible libraries in New York State.
- Fund improvements to the state's telecommunications infrastructure, connecting all libraries to the high-speed networks needed to deliver information, quickly and reliably, to the people of the State of New York.
Thank you very much.
[NOTE: Others testifying on behalf of the New York State Consortium of Consortia include Robert J. Dobbs, Jr., at the Syracuse hearing on May 14, and Anthony W. Ferguson at the Long Island hearing on May 19. In addition, a statement from NYSCoC can be found under Comments elsewhere on this site.]
The Role of the New York State Library
in Leading and Supporting New Directions for Library Services
and
Our Concern for State Library Services and Accessibility
A Statement Presented to
The Regents Commission on Library Services
By
Zebulon S. Robbins, Jr., Vice President,
The Friends of The New York State Library, Inc.
On Behalf of the Friends and the
Elected Members of the Governing Board:
Jeffrey W. Cannell, Director
Phillip B. Eppard, Director
Robert J. Freeman, Director
Coreen Hallenbeck, Treasurer
Ursula Poland, Director
Norman S. Rice, President
Zebulon S. Robbins, Jr. Vice President
Lewis Rubenstein, Secretary
Diane Waite, Director
The Friends of The New York State Library will stimulate increased government and
public support for the State Library.... -- From our Vision Statement, December 1996.
Distinguished Members of the Commission, Regent Bartlett, and Friends:
Thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of users and friends of The New York State Library. I am Zebulon S. Robbins, Jr., a Trustee of the Shenendehowa Public Library, and Vice President of The Friends of The New York State Library. I am not a librarian, but have worked closely with libraries throughout my career as an educator and administrator.
With the help of Senator Farley, other members of the Legislature, and the State Library, I was proud to have a hand in organizing the first school library system 20 years ago. Later, I served on (and became chair of) the Regents Advisory Council on Libraries. I was also a delegate to the 1990 Governor's Conference and the 1991 White House Conference on Library and Information Services. In 1994 I chaired the Commissioner of Education's Emergency Task Force on Library Aid. I continue to advocate for good library services in many venues.
1. About the The Friends
The Friends of The New York State Library is the only organization formed by users and friends of the New York State Library. We are a voluntary membership organization, incorporated as a not-for-profit group concerned for the future of the State Library. Our purpose is to inform the public, the Governor, the Regents, the Legislature, others -- and, now, the Regents Commission on Library Services -- regarding resources needed to ensure that the State Library can fully serve the government, people and libraries of the State.
Our some 265 members include legislators, independent researchers, business people, students, medical and health services personnel, government workers, local history experts and scholars. They elect our Governing Board.
The names of the elected members of the board appear on the cover page of this statement (we also have four ex-officio members from the Library). Norman S. Rice, Director Emeritus of the Albany Institute of History and Art, is our President. Other members of the Board include:
- a public library director;
- a library and school of information, science and policy dean;
- a professional genealogist;
- a book publisher;
- a state official and member of the New York State Bar;
- a retired Assistant to the Commissioner of Parks and Recreation; and
- an expert in medical library services.
Bill Kennedy, eminent author and the founder and director of The New York State Writers' Institute is Honorary Chair. We organized in 1993 as "The Committee for the State Library" and became "The Friends" in 1997.
2. We Help the Library and Serve Our Members
We have consistently advocated for the acquisitions funds and other resources needed to provide State Library services. We helped secure the Excelsior system to help extend electronic access statewide. As part of our commitment to increase visibility of the Library, we:
- sponsor public events and programs to inform the public about the State Library;
- pay the cost of printing the quarterly New York State Library News and furnish a volunteer editor for that publication;
- paid the cost of a survey of Friends' use and perceptions of the library; and
- advertise in The Legislative Gazette to enable the Library to have a multi-page supplement distributed without cost to some 15,000 readers.
3. The Roles of the State Library
Any one of us uses relatively few of the Library's many services. But the services and collections that each uses are uniquely important to that individual. And for each of our members, there are thousands of other New Yorkers who share the same experience. For instance:
- People who use collections and electronic resources regularly for their research and writing may be completely unaware of the Talking Book and Braille Library.
- Or how the Library serves other libraries in the network of 74 systems.
- Or how collections of Library manuscripts, rare books and papers are coordinated with those of the State Archives to make unique resources available to many.
- Or know the joy of someone in Willsboro receiving an interlibrary loan from the State Library.
- Or the wonderful discoveries a first-time user of the State Library's genealogy and local history collection encounters with the help of a volunteer.
- Or that a large percentage of the Library's users now use the Library services without ever entering the Library's door itself.
In fact, using the wealth of information you are collecting about libraries and the services that the people of the State need, perhaps the Commission can articulate better than any other public body or individual, the nature and value of the nation's most comprehensive state library agency for the 21st century. We hope that your report will do that.
The Research Library is the principal library for State government. It extends its services to the entire State. Its collection numbers more than 20 million items. The collection is particularly strong in law, social and health sciences, legislative matters, technology, education and history. It is one of the 125 largest research libraries in North America - it is the only state library to qualify for membership in the Association of Research Libraries. Its Federal and state government documents and manuscript and rare book collections are treasures of the State. The skills, knowledge and performance of its staff are important to libraries and individuals of all ages throughout New York. (For instance, the Talking Book and Braille Library, which is part of the Research Library, serves nearly 40,000 people of all ages in 55 upstate counties, each of whom has some visual, physical, or learning disability.)
The Library Development Division works in partnership with the library systems to bring cost effective, quality library service to the millions of people who use New York's 7,000 academic, public, school and special libraries. Librarians, trustees, public officials and community leaders depend upon the Division as they solve problems and find new ways of making library services and resources available to people of all ages. The Division makes recommendations on statewide policy to the State Librarian. The staff administers more than $100 million in state and Federal aid for the improvement of library services in New York State.
4. Accessibility
When the Library instituted the Excelsior online information system and, later, its expanded website, it took major steps in making its resources and services available to the entire State. Now, EmpireLink is demonstrating new document delivery service to the people of the State. But there is still much yet to do to make the Library fully accessible. The Library's services must be more visible, and the Library needs to be open additional hours.
The rich collections and resources of the Research Library should be better known to the public. It is disgraceful for a magnificent institution of learning to be open only the "9-5" business hours of State Education Department offices! The Friends, as I mentioned, recently financed a study of Library users in cooperation with the Library and the University at Albany's School of Information Policy. Expanded hours was one of respondents' top requests. Often people from the Hudson Valley, Western New York and the Adirondacks who travel to visit the State Museum on weekends make staff at Museum information desk aware of their astonishment and displeasure at finding the State Library closed.
We are concerned that the Talking Book and Braille Library's services for learning disabled readers are largely unknown to educators and parents, despite efforts by the Library to inform them. As the number of learning disabled readers increases, the capacity for the Talking Book and Braille Library to meet their needs must be strengthened. The Library needs additional staff to promote the Library's services within schools and to families of students who have disabilities and to respond to their specialized needs.
5. Financial Support, State Aid and State Law
We are not expert on the Library's financial needs. However, we know that at least two types of budget constraints impair the Library's services: lack of staff and lack of funds for acquiring books and materials for the collection.
We understand that in the last five years the Research Library has lost 25 positions in technical and public services, and positions in the Library Development Division are not being filled as vacancies occur. The latest published data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that New York, with the largest state aid program in the nation, has fewer Library Development staff than California, Connecticut, Kentucky, Maine, Pennsylvania and Texas! To provide quality services (and to increase the hours of service) the Library must add staff.
Acquisition of new materials have been severely curtailed each of the past several years. We find that current books we seek in fields in which the State Library has been strong are not available. We find that subscriptions to needed journals are being cancelled. We were acutely dismayed to learn that the Regents requested only $250,000 in additional acquisitions funds for the year 1990-2000 -- when documented need is such that an increase of $2.5 million would be a realistic, yet modest, request.
Recommendation 1. We urge the Commission in its remaining months to pursue a thorough examination of the Library's resource needs. We also urge the Commission to suggest additional new ways of supporting State Library collections and services as detailed below.
New Yorkers read heavily and our libraries place a high priority on having ample collections of books. State aid laws currently earmark nearly $20 million for the purchase of library materials in academic ($1.7 million); school ($13.1 million); "central libraries" of public library systems ($1.7 million); public library systems ($12.3 million in "book reimbursal"); and, the Research Libraries of The New York Public Library ($767,000).
State aid for the NYPL Research Libraries appropriately recognizes the fact that The New York Public Library's services extend to the State, the nation and the world. The designated aid for the NYPL Research Libraries currently totals $6.4 million (including the $767,000 identified in the paragraph above). This aid is an important part of the State's recognition of its statewide role.
The Legislature has wisely provided authority for specific funds for certain key State Library functions through the state aid program. These functions include support for the Talking Book and Braille Library, funds for conservation and preservation of endangered materials in the Research Library and, at times, for statewide "electronic doorway library" services. In each of these three instances, the same or larger amount is also designated for The New York Public Library. We recommend that such aid should now be provided also for State Library acquisitions.
Recommendation 2. We urge the Commission to include in its recommendations for access of library services to all, that State Library hours of public service be increased to open the Library on Saturdays and Sundays and in the weekday evenings.
Recommendation 3. We urge the Commission to highlight in its report, the expanded roles of the State Library in the new century.
As a key part of this, we recommend that the Commission urge the Regents, the Governor and the Legislature to encourage further development of the EmpireLink initiative and facilitate the role of the State Library in statewide licensing of commercial databases.
Recommendation 4. As the Commission examines State laws regarding library services in the context of service needs in the 21st century, it appears important to us that the Commission also examine laws governing the State Library and make appropriate recommendations to modernize them and bring coherence to the various scattered provisions in Education Law.
Recommendation 5. Finally, a practical and urgent recommendation: Please make clear to the Regents, the Governor and the Commissioner of Education that staff in the Research Library and in the Library Development Division is critical to the Library's capacity to provide current services. To implement the urgently needed increased hours and services of the 21st century, additional staff is required.
Thank you for listening to the concerns of The Friends of the New York State Library. We are confident that they are shared by many people who cannot be here today. We wish you well in your important responsibility.
Eva H. Gemmill, Library Volunteer
Poestenkill Library
ONWARD AND UPWARD -- AGAIN
Poestenkill Library is a direct descendant of a library launched by the Parent Teachers Association in 1964. The next decade saw the PTA's collection of books moved six times. Finally, in 1974, the library found a home in the Town Hall basement and Virginia Plant became volunteer director.
For eight hours each week Virginia, with Sue McLaren and lots of other volunteers, provided friendly library service to the community. Virginia knew nearly everyone's card number, and showered affection on little children. The Town of Poestenkill, meanwhile, began to include the library as a line item in their annual budget - an item that has increased considerably.
In 1993, nearly thirty years after the library was launched, the community was shocked when their director, then an octogenarian, announced her retirement. At that crucial moment the future of Poestenkill Library depended upon its committed volunteers.
Townspeople held a public meeting and voted overwhelming to reorganize and continue the service that Virginia Plant had started. Sue McLaren and Margie Morris became volunteer co-directors, and seven conscientious trustees were named.
Hardly had these trustees realized their responsibilities when new compliance standards for public libraries were issued by the New York State Education Department. Undaunted, the Board met those standards one by one by one, always with the strong support of Rachel Baum of Upper Hudson Library System. Computers were added to the crowded little library and the Board employed a well-qualified director, Wendy Payette. Library hours were increased from eight to twenty-four; more than 11,000 items were cataloged; an on-line card catalog was created; Friends of the Library organized; space was made for a popular audio and video tape collection; on-line circulation began; and Poestenkill Library became connected electronically to other Upper Hudson libraries.
What a proud achievement when the New York State Education Department granted a charter to Poestenkill Library in 1996!
In tandem with the growth in library services, new young families moving to town quickly find their way to the Library. New cards are being issued at a great rate - an increase of some ten per cent per year. From Pre School Story Hour to Book Buddies for those who cannot get to the Library, all ages and segments of the community are represented in the services the Library offers.
But the plot thickens. The Library will move, probably within the year, from its crowded Town Hall basement to new quarters in a handsome old house on Main Street, adjacent to the Town Hall. Surely this is their most significant challenge and opportunity to date.
There's another twist to the plot: Hardly had the Town of Poestenkill signed final purchase papers on the new property when our library director's family received an offer they couldn't refuse in another state. So the search for a new director is on. Wendy Payette will be hard to replace. One message she leaves us is this: "Small libraries need to find a bigger voice for their common concerns."
We recognize the advantages for our community of the State's requirements for contemporary library amenities. At the same time we struggle valiantly to fund them. Burdened with major increases in school taxes, some of our patrons think longingly of a simpler, less expensive past - just when we ask them to help fund an exciting future.
Poestenkill Library, like most other libraries, has found that serving its community with today's technology demands growth and change. And it is expensive. The Library depends on continued generous support of the Town Board, on the continuity evident in the Library Board, and on the hard work of many, many volunteers. We must also have the continued support of the State Legislature and the Board of Regents.
Susan L. Hauer, Director
Town of Esopus Port Ewen Library
Since this is testimony and not an academic exercise, I'd like to tell you how things are in the small public library field.
What makes libraries stand apart from other not-for-profits? Libraries are not charities. We have all heard the saying, "the difficult we do at once, the impossible takes a little longer." In our current fast paced world, everything is political. To get your share of attention and resources one must play the shell game. A game, I like to call priorities. That's why, the founding fathers in their wisdom and taking their cue from God and the fact that all mean are created equal, came up with legislation and taxes. Funding library services is not a charitable endeavor.
What libraries do is much too vital to be whimsically funded. Education must be funded with taxes. Using other means is also fine, if a hold-harmless clause exists for a floor or level, which by law, funding can not go below. One recent attempt to establish the floor has been Chapter 414. However, 414 does not provide for elected trustees, which is essential in disseminating tax monies and directly representing the public. Referendums on spending tax dollars is a political issue and library trustees need to be democratically elected. Additionally, NYLA's Books, Bricks and Bytes Campaign talks about municipalities bonding for snowplows without a thought as to their necessity or value to the community. Why do libraries have to convince the decision-makers, that they should be funded as well as the Highway Department. Has anyone ever seen blacktop crews having a bake sale by the side of the road?
But you probably know all I have already said and implied. So the real reason I am here today is to impart to the Commission my idea on how to raise the bar of library services in New York. The State Education Department has recently attempted to begin reform with mandated chore testing in our elementary schools. For libraries, the test is funding. Therefore, permissive legislation, which allows each community to determine what level of library services they would tax themselves for, is the key. The legislation would also provide for elected trustees to assure the public that they are represented and will have an opportunity to monitor the budget. This legislation should eliminate the home rule waiver, which somewhat limits the library from becoming a political football and makes those who are directly receiving and paying for the services, responsible in deciding the fate of the library appropriation.
The State Library has recently dealt with free direct access issues. As we all recognize, access to library services and materials is not free; it's about funding. In a recent summit I attended at a state assemblyman's home office, he asked if the system was broken. The group of public library officials in attendance were puzzled by his question. No, they finally answered, it's not broken. However, we could make our libraries run better if we had better funding.
Stable, secure and sufficient funding causes the bar of library service to rise. The Town of Esopus Library stands as a case study in this phenomenon. Ten years ago, our contract with Town Government gave the library $22,000. There were about 1,000 library cardholders in a population of 8,000. The library open hours totaled 21. On Tuesday, June 1, 1999, the voters in our district agreed to tax themselves $160,287 for library services in Esopus. We are currently open 47 hours and at last count, over 50% of the population in the library district had cards. And of course, we have all the automated services now available to small public libraries, and are constantly looking toward more and improved technological capabilities as well as expanding programing and coorperation with schools and other public agencies which continues to raise the bar of library services in Esopus. As the director, working with staff, trustees, friends and volunteers, I was able to grow the library beginning in 1988 as a result of the improvement to the minimum standards for public libraries. The newsletter [to be linked here with appropriate message -- Kathy/Diane, it's called "esops993.doc" and is in MS-Word format] I have attached to my testimony is the result of 10 years of improved funding for our library.
As the greatest percentage of funding comes from the locality, the time has come to mandate a minimum standard of funding for public libraries and enabling legislation to achieve it. In addition, while you're concentrating on raising the bar, I would recall the 10th minimum standard of a library professional in every library and mandate that it be instituted along with the teaching of administration in library schools.
I am certain that you have heard many suggestions for improvement to library services during the course of these testimonies. What voters, and I, as a library professional, expect from the Commission, is leadership. Inspire others, by your actions, to continue to strive to raise expectations of the value of libraries and library service.
Thank you.
Warren G. Hawkes
New York State Nurses Association, Latham
on behalf of the Upstate New York and Ontario Chapter
& New York/New Jersey Chapter of the Medical Library Association (MLA)
As medical librarians and health professionals, we feel it is our responsibility to direct the Commission's attention to the importance of health information to patient care, hospital, health institutions and the general public. Also addressed are some of the issues associate with providing health-related information library services.
I. Impact of access to information on patient care
A 1991 scientific study conducted in fifteen hospitals in the Rochester, NY area revealed that 80% of 208 participating physicians said they handled some aspect of their patient's care differently as a result of information provided by their hospital library. [Marshall JG. The impact of the hospital library on clinical decision making: the Rochester study. Bull Med Lib Assoc 1992 Apr;80(2):169-78.] In this survey, physicians stated that information provided by their hospital librarians contributed to better-informed clinical decisions. Overall, physicians rated the information provided by the hospital library more highly than that provided by diagnostic imaging, lab tests, or discussions with colleagues These findings confirm a previous study of physicians in Chicago, in which 95% of the respondents said that information from the library contributed to higher quality care for their patients.
Physicians also stated that the information provided by the library helped them in the following manner with the patients they treated:
- 19.2% reported avoiding patient mortality
- 8.2% reported avoiding hospital-acquired infection
- 21.2% reported avoiding surgery
- 45.1% reported avoiding additional tests or procedures
- 28.3% reported avoiding additional outpatient visits
Importance of health information professionals to hospitals
Immediate access to up-to-date patient care information is essential for informed clinical and management decision-making. Qualified health science librarians, aided by computer technology, can provide a broader range of information and locate needed information more quickly than other hospital employees or medical professionals doing the research on their own. Eighty-five percent of the physicians in the Rochester study reported that the information provided by their librarians saved them time, and 93% reported that the information provided them with new knowledge, with resulting cost savings and improved patient care for their institutions. This data reinforces the need for the delivery of quality health-information to health institutions in New York State.
II. Existing State programs
Several excellent New York (NY) State programs already exist which support the delivery of health information to hospitals and other health institutions. It is important that these programs continue to be funded.
The Hospital Library Services Program is a state-funded program, started in 1984, to provide services to assist not-for-profit hospitals licensed by the New York State Health Department to meet the Board of Regents' standards of quality for health science libraries in hospitals. The Hospital Library Services Program in New York State offers the following services:
- support electronic interlibrary loan (ILL) among hospital libraries
- improve union listing of monographs and serials among hospitals
- support medical reference services in all hospital libraries
- improve database access, telecommunications, and electronic networking for libraries in hospitals of all sizes
- support continuing education opportunities for hospital librarians and liaisons;
- enhance cooperative acquisitions programs
- enhance medical library cooperation and improve the quality of medical library service through communication.
This program provides numerous benefits for hospitals in New York State:
- One component of the Hospital Library Services Program is the Medical Circuit Library Program, which provides both on- and off-site services of a medical librarian for the hospitals in various regions of NY, who do not have a librarian on staff
- Grants to hospitals, which may be used to purchase library materials to strengthen the library's collection; to purchase computer equipment and software for improving the quality of reference and interlibrary loan service available; to support service fees for connecting to the Internet; or to support library staff attendance at continuing education programs and conferences
- Resource sharing, which includes support for library cataloging and interlibrary loan on DOCLINE or OCLC, the Western NY Hospitals Union List of Serials (WNYHULS) project and support for reciprocal interlibrary loan groups
- Continuing Education, which includes sponsorship of Medical Library Association (MLA); Continuing Education courses and other continuing education events planned for hospital librarians such as annual liaison updates or information fairs.
The Hospital Library Services Program is a vital program and should be continued. Comments on how to improve this program are mentioned later in this statement.
NY State Medical Information Services Program
New York State provides $506,000 to subsidize access to medical information for all New Yorkers via the NY State Medical Information Services Program. The purpose of this program is to improve access to health information for all New Yorkers by making resources of the National Network/Libraries of Medicine libraries directly available to libraries in the 3Rs regions. Each year, more than 48,500 requests for medical information from users in all types of libraries -- schools, colleges, hospitals, business and the general public -- are provided through this program. Without this program many libraries, especially medical libraries, rural hospital libraries, and rural public libraries -- could not afford access to medical information. This program is also vital and should continue to be supported.
Reference, Research and Library Resource Systems (3Rs)
The State funded 3Rs also provides a critical link in the delivery of health-information. The New York State 3Rs offer services and subsidizes the following:
- Direct interlibrary loan: Useful to health institutions for obtaining obscure and hard-to-find information
- Group Access Capability (GAC): Selective OCLC access for libraries to conduct interlibrary loan in the region; promotes resource sharing in the region among libraries of all types
- Regional Bibliographic Data Base grants: Offers grant opportunities to libraries and library systems for bibliographic database development projects and retrospective conversion
- Library Services and Technology Act (previously the Library Constructions and Services Act): Supports grants to library systems and libraries and statewide services which enable librarians and other staff to provide the highest possible level of electronic doorway library services and to emphasize special library services which contribute to improved access to information and library services for all the people of the State
- Library advocacy and representations through the 3Rs: Ensures that the needs and concerns of all libraries, including health-related libraries are addressed.
While the existing State programs support an otherwise unmet need, some improvements could be made to these programs and other new programs should be considered.
III. DIRECTIONS FOR THE FUTURE
Hospital Library Services Program
The Hospital Library Service Program is an important program, but it has changed little since its inception and should be updated to meet current health information needs. Currently, the Hospital Library Services program is only available to acute care facilities. The changing business and health environment has prompted a need to expand this program to include other health facilities such as mental health institutions, rehabilitation organizations, nursing homes, etc. Health care is conducted in many other venues in addition to hospitals, and the State is doing them a disservice by not funding non-acute care facilities. Let us stress again, the Hospital Library Service is very valuable to the hospitals it is currently serving. Unfortunately, the smaller hospitals and their libraries are being absorbed by the larger hospitals or they are closing due to financial stress. The State needs to make these services available to other organizations where they are needed, not just acute care facilities.
Many hospitals are making their resources available to other agencies and institutions which are not subsidized by the State through fee-based services. Sadly, the smaller organizations cannot afford to pay for these services even though they are desperately needed. Most libraries in non-subsidized institutions contribute significantly toward resource sharing with other libraries in the various regions. These institutions contribute valuable health information to the public within this State. Another issue to be taken into consideration when updating the Hospital Library Service Program is the criteria for funding. Currently, funding is determined by the number of beds in an acute care institutions. Perhaps now is the time to rethink this model and develop other criteria for allocating funding, e.g. services offered, need for resources, etc.
Consumer Health Information
Today, all hospitals and health institutions are responding to an increasing demand for consumer health information. Patients and their families are taking a more active role in health decision-making and have both the desire and need to be informed. The aging of the population of NY State will make health care one of the primary concerns for senior citizens. They will be looking for their tax dollars to be spent on programs and services that address this concern. This includes access to health-related information. The demand for this service is presently beyond most libraries resources. State services and/or program should be developed to help libraries meet this critical need in the future. Included in the delivery of consumer health information should be more State-wide access to online databases (open to all library types) and the possible development of a Health Information Support Network. Some initiatives are underway to develop regional information networks, but little is being done in the area of health information networks for the public. The State needs to develop a Web presence in the area of health information as well.
We ask the Commission to please consider the points outlined in this statement. It is vital to continue to fund the current programs offered. They make a substantial contribution to the delivery of health information in the State and to the public. As a summary, the 3Rs in NY positively impact access and delivery of information for health institutions. Consider expanding the Hospital Library Services Program to non-acute care institutions who constantly struggle with delivering quality medical care without quality information. Services and programs need to be modernized to address current issues for libraries in health institutions. These programs and services also need to address issues for smaller-sized and for-profit hospitals and libraries. Lastly, more emphasis needs to be placed on the development of consumer health information programs and networks.
Thank you for this opportunity to provide input to your planning process.
Nancy M. Heller, Director of Library Services
Schenectady County Community College
Trustee, Capital District Library Council
Today I would like to speak to you on the important role the Capital District Library Council, one of the nine Regional Reference and Resource Councils of New York State, fulfills for the five public two-year colleges located in this ten county region. These institutions are: Adirondack Community College, Fulton-Montgomery Community College, Hudson Valley Community College, my own institution Schenectady County Community College and the State University of New York College of Agricultural & Technology at Cobleskill.
The libraries of these associate degree granting institutions with enrollments that range between approximately 1,600 to 7,000 F.T.E. (full-time equivalent) students provide a wide array of print, audiovisual and electronic resources to students and faculty. We prepare students to either enter the workforce directly with occupational degrees or with transfer degrees to have completed the first two years of college in a cost effective manner.
The Capital District Library Council administers the Coordinated Collection Development program, important supplemental funding allocated to academic libraries by New York State. This money is used to help academic libraries develop their collections in designated subject areas. As public institutions, however, our libraries support not only campus constituencies, but also our local communities. As an example of how this funding is utilized, Schenectady County Community College acquires books, periodicals and audiovisual materials in fire science, hotel technology/culinary arts, travel and tourism and paralegal studies. It should be noted that SCCC is the only library in the Capital District that actively collects fire science materials, an important aspect of public safety. Also, its culinary arts program is nationally accredited by the American Culinary Federation Educational Institute and its paralegal program is approved by the American Bar Association. These are all degree areas that lead to employment opportunities for SCCC's graduates and are of importance to the economy of the Capital District and the state.
Coordinated Collection Development Funding in 1998/99 ranged from $5,776 for Fulton-Montgomery, the smallest of the local two-year colleges, to $11,241 for Hudson Valley, the largest. Increased funding for these materials which are shared with all libraries across the region and beyond through established interlibrary loan networks would significantly assist two-year college libraries in their support of a better educated New York State workforce.
The sharing of resources in the Capital District is greatly facilitated by the daily courier service that is operated by the Capital District Library Council. Monday through Friday this service delivers and picks up materials from all types of libraries, academic, public, special and school, across the region. On average thirty-five stops are made each day by the courier, and thus, rapid and cost effective transfer for materials is facilitated. In 1997/98 154,000 items were shared among local libraries. It also should be pointed out that all five of the two-year colleges in CDLC's area are net lenders, that is, loaning more materials to other libraries than are borrowed.
The Capital District Library Council also sponsors the valuable Direct Access Program. Under this program participating libraries issue DAP cards to users facilitating direct, onsite borrowing of materials from other local libraries. This program in which approximately 70 area libraries of all types voluntarily take part provides access to combined resources of over 6 million books and 30,000 magazine and journal titles. The students of the two-year colleges make ready use of this CDLC program to visit other local libraries just as possession of a DAP card facilitates use of our collection by students from other colleges and universities and members of the community.
Over the years resource sharing in the area has been greatly aided by CDLC's regional automation endeavors. An annually updated CD-ROM catalog, CaDiLaC, has provided area libraries with access to the library holdings of other institutions. A test phase of CaDiLaC Online is now operating; it connects the online catalogs of twelve libraries, including those of all five of the two-year colleges.
The CDLC facility itself provides attractive meeting rooms and a new computer training classroom for the use of personnel across the local library community. The workshops and training updates offered by CDLC professional personnel are invaluable to the two-year colleges with their small staffs and the other types of libraries within the region as well.
Since its establishment in the late 1960's CDLC has become a vital part of the Capital District library scene. It is integral to the operations of the area's wide range of libraries, including those of the five two-year colleges.
Malcolm K. Hill, Director
Mid-York Library System, Utica
My name is Malcolm Hill. I am the Director of the Mid-York Library System, a public library system in Utica, with 43 mostly small, mostly impoverished member libraries that do an extraordinary collective job working together to serve our aging, economically challenged, and shrinking population.
The Commission has an extraordinary opportunity to move library service forward in this State, but you will not do so by throwing more money at the status quo. If you are willing to challenge some sacred cows, gore some oxen, and threaten some turf, you may help us to move forward.
Librarianship does not seem to be a field that sets very high standards for itself. In New York, that notion starts at the very top, where the State of New York has never even mandated universal public library service. Are libraries, which serve every citizen in a community, less important than public education?
For those public libraries that do exist, the State Education Department has promulgated "minimum standards" that are truly ludicrous. Even those new standards took ten years for full implementation, and I see no evidence that the standards have done anything of their own accord to improve library service. The current minimum standards were "dumbed down" from an initial list of 45 proposed standards in 1988, and we ended up with a set of standards that seemed mostly designed to ensure that no existing library would lose its charter.
On an individual level, librarians graduate from professional schools, get a certificate from the State Education Department, and then are free to ply their trade in public libraries for thirty or forty years or more without one single requirement for training, continuing education, or recertification of any sort imposed by the Department.
RECOMMENDATION #1: Public library service in the State of New York must be mandated, either by way of direct operation of a public library or by contract with an appropriate adjoining municipality. Standards must be developed to assure that an appropriate base level of funding is required and provided by the State for the implementation of this mandate.
RECOMMENDATION #2: The minimum public library standards must be revised upward in such a way that library service is materially and objectively improved from its current level. A library that cannot meet tough new standards should be given the opportunity to contract with a neighboring library to operate as a branch, or to operate as a reading center in conjunction with a public library system.
RECOMMENDATION #3: Every holder of the public librarian professional certificate, and every individual designated as the Library Manager or otherwise as the head of a public library, must be required to attend a specified minimum number of continuing education contact hours each year, with recertification every three years only for those who meet the annual requirement. A nonlibrarian who fails to meet this requirement should be removed from his / her position in charge of a library.
The institutions for library service delivery, at both a local and state level, has grown like patchwork over time, and there is little logic behind some of the constructs we defend so earnestly. At the local level, there are still hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who live outside the legal service areas of public libraries, but through the magic of school district and county funding, many of those people are "sort of served" by contract. In the Mid-York area, for example, we are seeing increasing numbers of libraries (usually village libraries) that derive the majority of their funding from outside their chartered service areas.
On the regional and State level, New York has 72 library systems. That seems like a lot for a state that has, at best, a static population and a static economy. We don't know for sure, though, because no one will frame the question in a public forum. The public library systems, the 3Rs councils, and the school library systems have become thoroughly bureaucratized and institutionalized, and there are no legal, political, or financial incentives to break the mold.
RECOMMENDATION #4: Require that the minimum geographic area served by a public library be either a town or a school district, and require the use of a school district or Chapter 414 funding vote for all libraries, regardless of type. Basing the service area on this model assures a) a larger and more consistent population and tax base than is often the case; b) a consistent model leading to assurance that every State resident is located within a library service area; and c) a mechanism to allow the voters and taxpayers to tax themselves appropriately for library service. Properly designed, this concept will eliminate much of the current controversy over free direct access.
RECOMMENDATION #5: Create legislation that would allow library systems of all types to instigate mergers if such appeared to be advantageous to local library service. There may be instances throughout the state where the merging of like or unlike systems could improve service. However, aside from the vague language authorizing consolidation of education corporations in Education Law 223, we have no models or guidelines.
RECOMMENDATION #6: Using the BOCES model as an example, require a merger study whenever a system director leaves his / her position. Such a study would not necessarily lead to a merger, but it would put the issues on the table for review.
RECOMMENDATION #7: Remove the financial disincentives for mergers of public libraries and library systems, and provide instead positive incentives for doing so.
The current minimum grant payable under Local Library Services aid would cause small libraries that merged into a combined population of less than 9,678 people to actually lose state aid. 356 public libraries, or 48% of the public libraries in the State, would be affected by this problem.
For any library system of any kind, an aid factor that includes a base grant is in jeopardy in the case of a merger. There are further specific merger disincentives built into the law for school library systems, and no one has ever contemplated the effect of a merger between library systems of different kinds.
For any two or more library systems that merge, the state aid payable to the newly merged system should in no case be less than the former systems received separately. Again using the school district model, additional incentive aid (perhaps an additional percentage of the regular state aid payable) for a fixed period of time should be made available to any systems that merge.
Finally, there are some purely financial issues that I would like to bring to your attention. Meaningful planning for improved service is very difficult in an environment in which we don't know when aid increases will be enacted and therefore whether we can improve or even sustain a service. It would also be helpful, of course, to have some reasonable assurance of the timing of the arrival of the funds which are allocated.
RECOMMENDATION #8: Education Law must be amended to provide for regularly scheduled increases in State aid to libraries and library systems.
Let's face it -- financial support for library service is scarce and precious, so it's important to use our existing resources as effectively as possible. We have an existing program, the so-called regional automation funding, that has nearly come to the end of its useful life. This fifteen year old program has always been controversial, and it is time to divert the $2 million a year to a service that everyone is clamoring for - statewide database subscriptions. By negotiating statewide license deals, the best possible price can be obtained, and the product is then easily accessible in every library across the state.
RECOMMENDATION #9: Funds now allocated to the Regional Bibiographic Databases program should be redirected to the State Library for the purchase of statewide electronic database subscriptions. Such use of these funds will be far more cost effective and universally valuable than the present program.
I thank the Commission for the opportunity to present my thoughts on some vital parts of the library service infrastructure - the people, the institutions, and the money that makes it all possible. I will be happy to answer any questions you may have.
New York State Association of Library Boards
Parry D. Teasdale, President, speaking on their behalf
The New York State Association of Library Boards, NYSALB, is the organization chartered by the Regents to represent public library trustees statewide. Last year we had a paid membership of over 350 library and system boards throughout the state. We appreciate this chance to address the Commission as you make plans that could profoundly affect the future of our libraries and the communities we serve.
A State Assemblyman recently asked library advocates: Is "the system" broken? What he wanted was a statement of the fundamental problem facing libraries today... other than a chronic shortage of money. But by asking about THE system (he wasn't referring to a specific library system), he assumed there is a consistency to library service statewide. That faulty assumption is worth exploring.
Test scores recently confirmed that even though the state requires a certain standard of education, some schools do a good job of educating kids while others are failing abysmally. Unlike schools, libraries are subject to very few uniform state guidelines. But as with schools, the quality of library service varies radically from one community to the next. So that sense, something IS broken.
As members of the Commission have undoubtedly discovered by now, New York has a patchwork quilt of library types: special district, school district, municipal and association, each funded in a slightly different manner. Perhaps the only characteristic shared by all public libraries statewide is that each is governed by trustees.
And that's where any proposal for change must start: with trustees. There are well over 5,000 public library trustees in this state. They can be a positive force for change if they -- we -- are made part of the process. If, for instance, the Commission chooses to recommend a major redrawing chartered service areas, trustees must be involved in those decisions. If there is a serious effort to establish a statewide requirement for public library service complete with new, higher standards, that effort, too, begins with trustee involvement. And if the Commission decides to prescribe closer and more specific links between public libraries and school libraries, library trustees will have a critical role to play.
Some trustees undoubtedly will be left in the dust as this process of change unfolds. The clueless ones will be those who think their responsibilities begin and end with attendance at library board meetings and who don't understand that if new standards are set for library service, that will automatically establish new standards for trusteeship. But there are many who would be more active if they only knew how.
One way to help trustees get involved in the process of determining and implementing higher standards for library service, in whatever way those standards are defined, is for the state Division of Library Development to renew its financial and technical support for trustee education, a commitment that lapsed a decade ago. State officials have always been generous with their time when it comes to working with trustees, but that's not enough anymore. This Commission should develop a joint statement with the State Library describing the mission of the Division of Library Development in trustee education. And this should be accompanied by specific steps designed to ensure that the state's commitment to training will be implemented and sustained.
NYSALB believes the challenge to the Commission does not lie in fixing a broken "system." We believe it lies in designing a practical, coherent approach to the delivery of better and more equitably distributed library service statewide, and to do so in a manner that does not undermine the principle of local control. Toward these ends, we offer you our support and encouragement in your difficult task.
One other concern the Commission should not overlook is the status of the state library. The fiscal neglect to which this great institution has been subjected is not only unconscionable, it's also a tragic disservice to the taxpayers of this state. Despite the hard work and creativity of the State Library staff, state government is, in essence, dismantling the library by starving it for resources. And once this invaluable resource is taken apart, does anyone believe it could be reassembled? The Commission should develop a plan for restoring the State Library and should voice in the strongest possible terms its support for the continued growth of this institution.
Michael O'Connor, Director
Southern Adirondack Library System, Saratoga Springs
Esteemed Members of the Regents Commission on Library Services:
My name is Michael O'Connor. I am the Director of the Southern Adirondack Library System based in Saratoga Springs, serving urban, suburban, and rural public libraries. I have served public libraries and public library systems in New York state for 25 years.
The root cause of the many problems and the tragicomic messes affecting public library service in New York State is the lack of a constitutional provision guaranteeing free public library service to all residents of the state. This is addressed in Senate Bill S1482 and Assembly Bill A1641.
Incorporating this bill into our most fundamental law, our state constitution, would be the first step in addressing all, I repeat, all of the many problems and crises in public library service brought to your attention during your hearings.
If you do not accept that premise, if you do not advocate vigorously for passage of those bills, then I believe that you will not address those problems in any meaningful way, and that you will be remembered as another in a long line of well-meaning and ineffectual commissions and task forces, if you are remembered at all.
I wish you well in your work to improve library service for the people of our state.
Sincerely, Michael O'Connor
Veronica Pastecki, Chairperson
Library Media Department, City School District of Albany
Thank you for the opportunity to speak today about library services in urban school districts. My district, the City School District of Albany, is typical of most city school districts. There are 20 buildings with an average age of 81 years. Our enrollment is 61% non-white and more than 51% of our students come from families with annual incomes below the poverty level. Many of our children come from homes and neighborhoods plagued by crime and poverty. In many cases, the school library is the only library service available to them. These are not the children who go to pre-school or story hours at the public library. A fortunate few might be included in the local Head Start Programs but many come to school ill-prepared for the demands expected of them.
Because of staffing and facility constraints, access to some school libraries may be limited to two or three days when there is a library media specialist assigned. On those off-librarian days, the library may also be the art room or the music room. As our enrollment increases, space becomes an extremely valuable commodity. One middle school principal has already announced that due to increased classes, he plans to move the library back to its original location; a space designed in 1921! Another principal thought an excellent way of creating space was to physically share the room presently occupied by a branch of our public library. He was sure that the ‘small details’ of such a merger could easily be worked out.
When an elementary flexible library schedule was initiated district wide in 1996, an immediate improvement was seen in the quality of student work. Although flexible library scheduling has been clearly demonstrated by research as the optimal method of library service, most city school districts cannot afford the additional staff. Indeed central administration recently refused a request by various principals and myself to create a new library position. The need for classroom teachers took precedence despite that fact that no new positions had been added in the last five years and student enrollment increased by 1,400 district-wide.
Our elementary librarians are responsible for instructing students in information literacy skills (sometimes up to 800 students per LMS), providing instructional support for fellow teachers while also organizing and maintaining their libraries. This is all done without any clerical assistance. In their ‘spare time’ these librarians are also responsible for being knowledgeable of the most recent changes in pedagogy, assessment and technology. They also serve on district committees to design and integrate curriculum, develop long-range technology planning and revise/create school board selection policies.
Because the existing standards fail to require an elementary library media specialist, school districts faced with economic shortfalls look first at those programs that are not mandated. Elementary library positions are especially vulnerable. Urban school districts, always on the short end of funding, often try to cut costs by hiring minimal staffing that can cover teacher preparatory periods. This practice has done more damage than anything associated with school libraries. It relegates librarians to serving as very expensive babysitters. It diminishes the professional role of library media specialists by limiting or often eliminating the time available for collaboration with teachers. Librarians are often viewed as being somewhat less than a teacher but somewhat more than a clerk is.
Lack of collaborative planning leads to parallel teaching where information literacy skills are taught in isolation from classroom activities. If the library media program is not an essential component of a student’s educational experience, how can we ever prepare our students for the increased rigors of the new State assessments and the movement towards inquiry-based learning? Don’t these children deserve at least the same level of support that suburban schools receive? Don’t they deserve access to resources that they often cannot find at home?
Library collections in our schools are carefully selected and maintained, but there are simply not enough resources available to meet the demands of most urban schools. The average expenditure in 1997/98 for the Big 4 cities was $12.38 compared to $22.94 for the rest of the state. With the average cost of an elementary library book being $15.00, it is not surprising to find that there are less than 12 books per child in our libraries. The School Library System’s funded on-line databases like Electric Library and Pro-Quest have opened an avenue of information for our students that we could not afford. We dread the day when funding for these services stop.
School libraries are in a unique position. They are not entities to themselves, rather they are often looked as just one more department or division in a school. They must compete for resources, space and staff in an increasingly restrictive budget. They are often a lone voice in a school even facing opposition or apathy from their own local bargaining units as they are viewed as being a very small, but vocal constituency.
Without sufficient and consistent resources, staff and administrative support, the school library media program is an endangered species in our urban school systems. Mandated elementary library media specialists will insure the viability of our elementary libraries, the foundation for future library users and life-long learners. Clerical support is needed to allow librarians to do the professional work of integrating information literacy across the curriculum. Full funding of the School Library Loan Program at $6.00 per pupil is essential. Additional funding for book and electronic resources for high poverty/low performing schools must be allocated even if it is done over a period of 5 years. Past funding programs like ESEA are examples of how this process could be implemented. Whether it be "Books, Bytes and Bricks" or another mechanism to sustain libraries, the need for support is self-evident in our urban schools. The students of my school, the future voters and tax-payers of the City of Albany and indeed all urban school districts implore you to understand their unique needs.
Thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts with you today. In closing, I would like to share this quote by Henry Ward Beecher: "A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life."
Josephine Piracci, Director
Shenendehowa Public Library, Clifton Park
Libraries: their importance, and their future
Libraries should not be considered as luxuries; they are necessities.New York State needs to truly consider libraries to be necessities. Public libraries are one of the only institutions that serve the entire community . They serve children, young adults, adults, and senior citizens. They serve those with diplomas, and those without. They serve those in the work force, as well as the unemployed, and retired. They serve homeowners, in addition to those renting apartments in their communities. Yet, state support is basically nonexistent. Libraries are regulated to serve everyone, but they are not given the means with which to provide that service.
New York State needs to face Free Direct Access with its eyes wide open. Public libraries should not be forced to adhere to the principals of universal service, if they are not going to be compensated to provide that service. Like it or not, all libraries in New York are not equal, and until they are, it is unfair, and inequitable to require the citizens of communities with strong libraries, to carry the burden of providing service to everyone without being compensated. Fire Districts, and School Districts only serve specifically designated constituents; why are libraries thought of differently? No community in New York State should find itself in the "unserved " category. All New Yorkers deserve quality library service.
New York State needs to strongly support Public Library Systems. They are the backbone of support for the public libraries all across the state. They need to be empowered to help libraries in New York State move into the 21st entury. They are the true leveling force; providing service to the remote and rural areas of the state. Public Library Systems need to be given resources. They are now asked to oversee, and guide the operations of numerous disparate libraries, many of which are grossly underfunded at the local level. System support for such libraries will require greater State funding, especially as we move in to providing expensive electronic access and databases.
New York State libraries need to be governed, and regulated by well informed leaders. The individuals, in whose hands rest the fate of all libraries throughout the state, should know how libraries operate, and what the issues are affecting library service in the state. Regents, legislators and others involved with governing state libraries and library systems should truly understand what is required to operate a library, and provide quality service to the residents of New York State.
Public Library System Directors Organization
presented by Hemwatie Jaipershad, Director, Upper Hudson Library System
on behalf of Arthur Weeks, Chair, PULISDO
The future of library services in New York State
Every resident of New York will have access to complete library and information services in their local community -- rural, urban, or suburban. Library service is intensely local as well as part of a statewide network; communities have a very strong desire to have local library service. Local libraries will have a wide variety of materials in a variety of formats -- books, magazines, CD-ROMs, computer programs, Internet access - integrating cutting-edge technology with reference services delivered to residents at home, at work, or in the library. Well-trained library staff will provide reference and information services, and instruction in the use of electronic resources as well as the traditional services valued by library users, e.g., story hours, book discussion groups, and literacy support. Libraries will have online public access computers everywhere they are needed, computer laboratories, and plenty of places to connect laptop computers; as well as room for programs, collections and community meeting spaces.
Business people, researchers, entrepreneurs, medical personal, parents and others will have fingertip access to large amounts of electronic information, including audio, video and distance learning over a sophisticated telecommunications infrastructure which continually incorporates updated technology.
Every community will be required to ensure that its citizens have library service. Libraries will be funded by local communities, counties, and New York State. Local communities will continue to provide the bulk of library support, however the State will fund a larger percentage of local library budgets. State funding formulas will encourage local support, while recognizing economic hardship in some communities. Currently chartered village libraries serve well beyond village borders, and are funded by municipal units that transcend the village or city line, making chartering meaningless in many cases. Charters will be changed to ensure that every citizen lives in a chartered library service area.
The combination of local support, strong library System presence, and State funding for systems and public libraries will provide a solid floor which ensures that residents throughout New York State have equitable access to library services.
Improving Library Services for all New Yorkers
Public library systems are chartered to strengthen, support and serve local public libraries by coordinating programs and centralizing cost-effective services. Public library systems will provide:
- a comprehensive strategy to ensure excellent library service throughout the state
- telecommunications infrastructure needed to ensure fast, robust connections to electronic databases, the World Wide Web, video and audio transmissions
- integrated online systems that allow citizens to use electronic card catalogs for efficient searching of collections
- access to databases and ongoing training for staffs in the use of electronic information
- very fast interlibrary loan and delivery service to patron's home, office, or library
- assistance to member libraries for funding campaigns, grants, and private sector fund-raising
- advice and counsel on administrative issues; direction on legal issues, building campaigns, space planning
- continuing education
- assistance with building library collections that meet community needs
- rotating collections of all sorts -- books, videos, books-on-tape, CDs
- coordination with central libraries and neighboring library systems to provide efficient service
Recommendation 1. State aid to systems should increase annually, replacing the current funding with a new formula package of per capita aid, square mileage aid, county aid, member library aid, urban system aid, central library aid and categorical aid.
Recommendation 2. Increase state funding for construction to $90 million for systems and public libraries. In order to provide high performance networked access to electronic information, libraries and systems need to reorganize and add space, rewire and add cable for computers and computer laboratories.
Systems will create flexible, creative methods for providing cost-effective services by cooperating with other library systems to provide services over larger regions or by merging with other library systems.
Recommendation 3. Categorical state aid will fund cooperative services ("cosers") between, among and within library systems. This aid will provide the funds and support for systems of same or various types to cross contract and/or work together to develop specific services. Such services may include databases of library holdings, delivery services, continuing education, and other services.
New York State supports seventy-two library systems of various types, with expenses for seventy-two sets of administrative overhead costs. It is possible that more state funding could be directed to service rather than administration by creating opportunities for systems to merge. A single "library system solution" dictated by regulation would be inappropriate and politically unfeasible. However, making laws and regulations more flexible would enable Systems to develop more flexible, creative solutions.
Recommendation 4. Create incentives, similar to school district merger incentives, which will make it possible for various types of systems to consider mergers.
Recommendation 5. When system directors leave their position, the system will conduct a study to determine whether there is an advantage to merge that library system with a neighboring one, of like or different types. Such studies will take into consideration demographics, geographic area, service needs, and other factors.
A central library is designated in each public library system to provide services which meet System-wide needs. State funds are provided for central library development and for the purchase of adult non-fiction or foreign language materials. The central library program ensures that there is at least one library in each System with an enriched collection and a critical mass of staff with day-to-day experience in working with the public. Central libraries can
- give depth and expertise in providing supplemental reference for member libraries
- provide training for member library staff in areas such as reference services, electronic reference resources
- loan materials and provide content to member libraries
Residents in different regions of the State have very different needs for central library support. In regions with many large member libraries, funding one central library is less important. In addition, the Internet and electronic databases are making it possible to decentralize reference service. Librarians in small libraries, with proper training, can provide patrons with reference help that was unthinkable just five years ago. At the same time, a number of Systems with many small libraries need the services of a strong central library. The central library program needs increased flexibility to meet the changing needs of various regions of the state.
Recommendation 6. Conduct significant and comprehensive revision of central library guidelines.
Recommendation 7. Strengthen member library participation in developing a central library plan.
Recommendation 8. Revise regulations to expand uses of central library funding to create regional centers, magnet libraries, training opportunities, virtual collections.
The Division of Library Development provides essential support to strengthen service through systems and local libraries, coordinated statewide database access, and advocates for library users. State leadership is needed in research, coordination, and advocacy.
Recommendation 9. Create state-level staff positions with high-level expertise in emerging areas, e.g. telecommunications. Provide funding needed to attract staff with depth of experience.
Recommendation 10. Expand staff to provide support to Systems on administration issues and direction on legal issues; to provide expertise in subject specialties such as reference and youth services; and to produce statistical reports, directories and other information in a timely manner.
Recommendation 11. Maintain and expand Empirelink databases for statewide access.
Redirect Regional Bibliographic Database aid to fund statewide access to databases.
Recommendation 12. Create a position at the Office of General Services to specifically negotiate library contracts.
Assuring ready access to library service for the Education and Information needs of all New Yorkers
Library service will be required by law ensuring that all residents in New York State will have access to high-quality public library service.
Recommendation 13. Ensure that every New York citizen lives in a chartered library service area. Currently chartered village libraries serve well beyond village borders, and are funded by municipal units that transcend the village or city line, making current chartering meaningless in many cases. Some citizens pay taxes in support of two or more libraries, while others pay nothing for library service.
Recommendation 14. Expand Local Library Services Aid to 40% of the portion of library budgets funded by local tax dollars. Include a maintenance of effort requirement which is consistent with maintenance of effort requirements for public library systems under current law and regulation.
This aid package will stress the importance of local funding by including funding factors based on tax support for libraries.
Recommendation 15. Institute funding factors which strengthen libraries serving economically distressed communities--based on unemployment rate, level of personal income, or assessed evaluation.
Recommendation 16. Permit most public libraries to specify the date and location of budget votes. (S1547/A1640).
Recommendation 17. Make Department of Education School Building Aid available to libraries on the same minimum building aid ratio as schools. Include funds for expanded infrastructure for automation, e.g. wiring, cabling, telecommunications.
Recommendation 18. Initiate state aid for public library cooperative services ("cosers") among local public libraries and branches; administered by public library systems. This aid would support services such as:
- shared children's services provided by a professional librarian
- shared support and maintenance of computer equipment and telecommunications costs
Recommendation 19. Create incentives for library mergers similar to incentives for school district mergers, with extra incentive aid available to the new merged library for ten years. Currently a library merger could result in less aid than that received by two separate libraries.
Marge Rizzo, School Library Media Specialist
O'Rourke Middle School, Burnt Hills
My name is Marge Rizzo. For 25 years I have been a middle school library media specialist in the Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake Central School District. With the ability of students in the smallest of libraries to get information from a variety of sources world wide, this is a particularly exciting and challenging time to be a school library media specialist.
Available resources may have changed, but our dual mission has not: to offer a program of reading encouragement and enrichment which will make students life-long readers and to build in our students the skills and strategies which will enable them to find and synthesize the information they need become life-long learners. In regard to reading, an invaluable resource for the school library is the State Library's Talking Book and Braille Library which provides the disabled student with the same quality of reading materials available to all students and helps them to fulfill the Language Arts requirement of a minimum of 25 books per year. In regard to the goal of making life-long learners, the American Association of School Librarians and the Association of Education Communications and Technology have stated in their information literacy standards released in 1998, that information literacy is the foundation of life-long learning. The student who is information literate will be able to access information, critically evaluate and select the information, organize and apply it to problem solving and communicate it clearly.
The creative library program is able to take the student from the point at which he or she recognizes the need for information to the point that the information gained is presented in a coherent and relevant format. The student is best served when the library media program in which these skills are taught has been developed collaboratively between the library media specialist and the classroom teacher. This program integrates library skills into all curricular areas rather than teaching them in isolation. To be effective this coordinated and integrated program needs to be taught by a certified media specialist at all levels. Along with teaching and managing the library and its resources, this person must be actively involved with classroom teachers in the development of projects and lessons. At the secondary level, there must be enough professional staff so that this curriculum development, the teaching of class groups, and the support to individual students can all happen. At the elementary level, librarians must be mandated. Their professional expertise is crucial to the early development of literate children who will develop into discriminating library users. Just as at the secondary level, the elementary library should be the center of an integrated program coordinated with the classroom subjects, developed by both the librarian and the teacher, and scheduled flexibly without the fear that the loss of the "library period" will result in the loss of the librarian.
Besides staffing, the second issue I would like to address is library funding. It is a fact that libraries have purchased technology and software with the same budgets they have had for the last 20 years. A $500 database makes a huge impact on a budget that must also deal with rising costs, equipment maintenance, and software licensing agreements. There are two ways to alleviate this situation. The first is to encourage the legislature to strengthen the language of Article 15-A which gives a $4 per pupil allowance for library materials to each district. Although senators indicated that the new monies were not intended to supplant district funds, the language allowed the district to use the money another way if the library had already been allocated the equivalent of $4 per pupil. Also, it is my understanding that there is a bill on the governor's desk increasing this to $6 per pupil. The second way our budget concerns could be helped is to urge the legislature to allow districts to spend unused textbook money on library materials.
In conclusion, with professional staff at all levels and adequate funding, we can produce information literate students in New York State.
Gail Alter Sacco, Director
Voorheesville Public Library
Introduction:
My name is Gail Sacco, and I am the Director of the Voorheesville Public Library. The library is small -- we serve a rural population of 7,400 and the building is approximately 8,500 square feet. Because the water supply is limited in my community and it is not convenient to any highways, there is very little business within our boundaries. Public institutions, including the library, are supported by residential taxes and the ability of our residents to support the library is reaching its maximum. I believe that the Voorheesville Public Library is representative of many of the NYS libraries which serve small populations.
How can NYS help its citizens and help libraries? And what will our future clientele need? The residents of NYS will always need public libraries -- that institution, which works on their behalf and provides support to their everyday lives. In fact, as the ability to access information increases, the role of our libraries becomes more critical to the success of each individual.
The following four areas are particularly important if New Yorkers are to get the best support in the 21st century.
The Physical Plant:
The physical building -- the library -- will remain critically important to every community. While the ability of each individual to link with people globally is exciting, it is also important to keep a sense of place, of community. In the next millennium, the public library will be a key institution -- especially in the smaller communities of NYS -- to sustain the local area. Programs libraries present will help residents find commonalties, buildings will continue to be community centerpieces, and library collections, both hard and electronic, will provide support for ongoing information needs.
The public library serves people of all ages and buildings provide space for them to know and help each other. Library buildings are the heart of local communities and must remain a priority for NYS.
We have found that the residents of Voorheesville use our building in many Ways -- for concerts and lectures, as a place for club meetings and to find books and materials. Our last lecture brought 80 people to hear a lecture on the Hudson River while our two writer's groups bring together 30 people on a weekly basis. The one which is primarily seniors recently published a book of their works.
Education:
The function of the public library in a free democratic society remains the same -- to provide access to information to all people. This will not change in the next millennium, however, the role of the professional librarian will become more critical. Librarians are today's experts at finding and evaluating information in print resources and on the Internet. They not only teach others how to use online resources but also how to evaluate the information they find. In my experience, no other profession is taking on this role-Librarians demand that electronic materials be well developed. They validate the resource, providing it with credibility. And they act on behalf of the people who reside in their service areas.
This year, two Voorheesville reference librarians were invited to teach eighth graders how to use the Internet and evaluate its resources because the school thought their abilities were outstanding. The teacher designed the curriculum unit, and discussed the educational outcomes with the librarians. (They had a theme to help focus their search.) It was a great success. We are also working with our other town governments to jointly develop quality web sites to help our constituencies. It is very exciting to discuss these needs with the other public institutions in our community because we increase our service while providing strong support for each other.
It is the librarians who understand and use the Internet to best advantage. Their role must expand to intertwine with other public institutions.
History:
An understanding of our past is a critical part of preparing for a productive and enriching future. Librarians are uniquely suited to support this effort because many are trained as archivists and preservationists. When coupled with their knowledge of the ways in which people use information, Librarians become a key resource for anyone interested in maintaining historical records. This issue concerns other institutions as well and provides many opportunities for various groups to work together.
The Voorheesville Public Library is taking the lead in developing a consortium of governments and non-profits to protect the area's history. We are looking at developing collection policy, establishing storage space, and preserving both documentary heritage and local government records. This year, the library has three grants-we are microfilming local records for our Town and Village, we developed four tabletop panels on local history using memorabilia that residents had in their homes and attics, and we are putting a museum display on the Internet for our local historical society. None of this would be happening if funds from the state and the NY Council for the Humanities were not available to us.
Resource Sharing:
Finally, I would like to say a brief word about resource sharing. As budgets shrink and people's need for information increases, the ability to share materials becomes more important. Libraries are the only business which satisfies that need for the average citizen. We do this through interlibrary loan, we do this by providing access to large databases, and we do this by searching out the answers to difficult questions. Library services in the future must continue to emphasize this ability and the residents of NYS must continue to get the materials and information they need.
This means that NYS must offer good delivery services for books and other materials as well as finding ways of increasing interlibrary cooperation. By sharing our resources, we all become richer.
The staff at the Voorheesville Public Library believe that they are essential to the well being of the community. We are working to combine those strengths that are unique to the public library with the other strengths we see. Please increase your financial support of libraries and encourage other institutions to use the library's strengths rather than waste money by duplicating them.
Thank you for your time.
Karen G. Schneider, Director
Brunswick Community Library, Eagle Mills
I am the director of the Brunswick Community Library in Rensselaer County. We serve 11,000 residents with a library occupying 750 square feet and funded with an annual budget of approximately $100,000. My testimony will address free direct access, the right to direct funding, and the need for better standards.
1. Free Direct Access
The idea that anyone can go to any library and get equitable service is a wonderful concept, worthy of the founders of public librarianship. To achieve this goal, our mutual priorities should be to ensure that New York is a state with no unserved library areas and minimum service standards high enough to guarantee quality library service no matter where you live or what you earn.
Superficially, "free direct access" sounds congruent with the concepts of universal service: anyone can get library service anywhere. In reality, however, as it is presently designed, "free direct access" imposes unfunded mandates on the strained resources of New York's libraries, enables local communities to continue underfunding libraries, and limits the solutions that libraries can use to address the underlying problem of unserved areas.
The proof that free direct access is a troubled concept is that it has no counterpart anywhere in tax-supported services. What town, seeking fiscal relief, wouldn't tap into another town's water supply, if it were legal to do so based on the justification that no one should be denied water? What public school would your children attend if you could choose?
I have heard that the Regents are concerned that without "free direct access," poor communities would be unable to access library services. I haven't seen any data demonstrating this. However, where my library is, the rich are feeding on the poor, and some middle-class communities are gnawing on others -- all because they can, because free direct access allows people to bypass the concept of paying for public services. If you survey the public again, ask them how they feel about supporting library services for nonresidents. Make it very specific, and ask them if they are willing to pay taxes for books and services that they won't have access to because the neighboring town knows a good deal when it sees one and sends its residents their way. Or make an analogy: ask them if they would be willing to expand school service to everyone who wants to attend, then cope with the added volume by recruiting volunteer teachers. If you aren't willing to do it for schools, then don't do it for libraries.
Free direct access also teaches a dangerous lesson: that library service is a commodity without a measurable value. Everything else in our culture has a price, and taxpayers are very familiar with the concept. It is true that library service, in New York State, is a commodity that people do not value enough. Small and medium libraries are one of the last ghettos of the feminized workplace, frequently staffed by middle-aged and senior women who usually work year in and year at low pay with few if any benefits, often in substandard working conditions, in libraries with at best marginal resources. This is a set of problems the Regents should be focused on, not whether a library is charging nonresidents a fair-market fee for access to local tax-supported services.
There are uglier, less obvious sides to free direct access. To quote the November, 1997 memo to the Regents from SED, "The basic irony of the present situation is that free direct access, intended to provide equal access to libraries for all New Yorkers, can act as a disincentive for a community to establish a library or adequately support its library if good library services are readily available nearby." I have heard members of my own town council say, "why can't people just go to Troy?" In other words, our town, with its median family income of $41,000, its high rate of employment, and its relatively comfortable tax load, sees direct free access as an enabling mechanism for continued underfunding of our library, even though this results in extremely bad library service to the 11,000 residents of our community and relies on using the tax-funded services of the beleaguered and impoverished town next door. The reality is that Troy cannot provide adequate service to our community, either, and many of our more mobile potential patrons hopscotch past Troy and lean on the services of libraries in Colonie and Albany. Poor people and children by far lose out the most--as usual--because they lack the mobility and leisure time to drive twenty or thirty miles to a decent library system.
In theory, free direct access has avenues of relief. These avenues are politically improbable and hugely unpalatable. In our system, a library with well-documented over-use by a neighboring town without a library system opened discussion with other libraries regarding denial of service. However, the potential for bad press is so strong that libraries without over-use problems are unwilling to join in a vote on this issue, and who can blame them? Libraries struggling to comply with the guidelines for free direct access find they have two choices: provide services willy-nilly to anyone who wants them, or deny service. Free direct access, as it is currently designed, provides no middle ground that allows local communities to come up with funding mechanisms that acknowledge the severe and chronic service problems in New York while enabling library use.
2. The Right to Direct Funding
The leadership priority for the Regents is not to continue to attempt enforcing the unworkable and unfair policy of "free direct access," but to turn to the much more rigorous challenge of direct funding. Susan Hauer, in her testimony, has pointed out the dramatic difference in library funding that can happen when voters are empowered to determine how their tax dollars will be spent. Her experience is not anomalous, but highly typical. The ballot-box approach is effective over 80% of the time--assuming you can get to the ballot in the first place. Locally, out of seven special or school district elections in the past decade, only one has lost, and the winners have all experienced dramatic jumps in library funding which in all cases have translated to much better service to their communities. When you look at the differences in fiscal support between libraries that rely on municipal funding and libraries that have learned how to appeal directly to the voters, it becomes obvious that librarians need to be educated, motivated and mobilized to use the ballot box.
Our library in Brunswick is the Cinderella before the prince came along. Our total budget, including all combined government aid, cash from bake sales, etc., is less than $9 per capita, or under $30 per household in our community, even though incomes are good, employment is high, and our population is literate. We are provisionally chartered because our funding situation is so bad, and the state is right to deny us our permanent charter; at some point you have to ask if you are really a library or merely a sentimental facade to amuse the locals as they drive by. We have worked very hard to establish good relations with our political structure, but our repeated requests for assistance from the town are met with the response that the voters do not want taxes to go up. We know we need to appeal directly to the voters, and we need as much flexibility in this appeal as is possible. We cannot pursue school district legislation, because four school districts overlap Brunswick. Special district legislation, which we considered seriously enough to draft legislation for, requires approval from the same politicians who would prefer we not impinge on the tax tables anyway.
Only 414 gives our library the right to appeal directly to the voters. We need to lavish 414 with the love and attention we would give an only child, because for many libraries, it is the one hope they have to deliver good library service. In particular, the legislative bill A1640/S1547, which I have been told is on the Regents priority list, would allow the library to determine the date and place of the vote, now required to be held at the same time as the municipal election. The Regents should focus on educating libraries on the power of the ballot box, and should work hard to ensure that libraries have as much flexibility as possible. To accomplish this requires developing additional positions at our Library Development offices, because the existing staff, wonderful as they are, have their hands full, and we need advocates whose sole purpose in life is to help libraries improve their funding.
3. Reasonable, Measurable Standards
I speak, write and consult on the topic of intellectual freedom. Though I am often asked to discuss tools that limit access to material people have a right to read, I think the greatest censorship happens through fiscal neglect--because we do not fund libraries to a point where we provide adequate access to information.
This year, our Board and I chose to mark the box "no" next to the section in the annual report that requires us to certify we have adequate space. This was a daring leap, made even more audacious by the fact that the State requires us to say "yes" or "no" to a question for which there is no right answer. There is no statewide space standard for public libraries. There is almost undeniably a correlation between this fact and the pernicious space problems that plague many of our libraries. This is just one example of the great "standards vacuum" in New York.
We need clear, explicit, performance-oriented standards for public library service, and we need to raise the barrier for what is and what is not a library. As the recent library survey indicates, people love the little room down the road where everyone knows your name. It is less clear that they would still love us if our staff received fair compensation for a day's work, if we had enough space to do our job, and if our permanent employees had retirement plans. It is also possible that many small libraries would simply cease to exist. I think this prospect scares some people. Nevertheless, we need to decide what our bottom line is for library service, and stick to it. We aren't doing anyone any good by putting on a brave face and providing a substandard service. We need to have enough internal courage to insist we have a quality product to sell. To paraphrase Jesse Jackson, "we are somebody." Now it is time to tell the world who we are.
Jean K. Sheviak, Executive Director
Capital District Library Council, Albany
The Capital District Library Council (CDLC) is one of the nine Reference and Research Resources (3R's) Councils in New York State. I am relatively new as director of CDLC, so I've spent some time reviewing the Council files and analyzing the services we provide and the role we play in our region. A few months ago I came across two volumes of records from the mid- to late-1960's. These volumes include correspondence and documents dating from before CDLC was chartered, and they provide a wonderful glimpse into the efforts of Capital Region librarians to make CDLC and the other Regional Reference and Research Library Councils a reality. Included in the volumes is the text of a talk given by Jean Connor, then Director of the Division of Library Development, in December, 1966. She noted that impetus for the 3R's came from the first Governor's Conference on Libraries which "highlighted the need for a cooperative approach to the problems of reference and research library service and placed particular emphasis on the role and potential of the new technologies."
Thinking about her comments, I realized that in the past thirty-three years, CDLC has not strayed far from its roots. We have broadened our focus somewhat (now including all types of libraries), but the basic need for cooperative approaches remains essential for libraries wanting to provide quality service. Certainly we have continued to take advantage of new technologies as they have developed.
CDLC serves a ten-county region. Our institutional members include 16 academic libraries, three public library systems, four school library systems, and 23 special libraries; this represents a total of 507 libraries. The Hospital Library Services and Documentary Heritage programs, both of which are based at CDLC, reach many additional libraries which are not direct Council members.
CDLC does many things very well for the libraries and library users in our region.
Very central to our mission is resource sharing, and CDLC facilitates resource sharing in a number of different ways:
- Through the provision of electronic regional catalogs of books, journals, and other library materials.
- By making available cataloging services to assist libraries in getting records into library catalogs.
- Through interlibrary loan services.
- By providing the CDLC courier service, which last year delivered over 150,000 items to our members.
- Through the CDLC direct access program, which allows patrons from participating libraries to go into other participating libraries to borrow materials.
- Through the administration of the Cooperative Collection Development program, a state-funded program for academic libraries about which you will be hearing more in testimony later today.
- By providing the structure in which cooperative efforts can develop and through which those involved can meet and talk.
Membership in CDLC opens the collections of the entire region to the patrons of all types of member libraries. The breadth of resources in academic libraries; the scientific or business or medical information in a wide range of corporate, hospital, or not-for-profit special libraries; and the historical data in small museums all are made available to students, researchers, and anyone else who wants to learn under the umbrella of programs in CDLC and other 3R's councils.
Cooperative endeavors don't stop with the sharing of materials. CDLC administers a number of statewide programs and grants which promote regional library cooperation and library development. The Hospital Library Services Program, Documentary Heritage Program, and Cooperative Collection Development programs focus on specific types of libraries. The Regional Bibliographic Database Program has been used for a wide variety of efforts in all of our libraries, ranging from provision of needed automation equipment and subsidies for electronic interlibrary loans to development of our virtual online regional catalog. The Library Services and Technology Act has been a major source of funds for a phenomenally successful technology training program we developed and offer to staff from member libraries.
While the major focus of CDLC and other 3R's historically has been on regional library efforts, the last few years have made clear the advantages of wider cooperative programs in some areas. This approach has been particularly rewarding in the purchase of electronic databases. Partnering with the other 3R's to take advantage of volume pricing discounts has made available to our members substantial price reductions and has, as well, made clear the importance of continuing to develop these types of statewide relationships.
While time precludes description of everything we do at CDLC, I have attached to the copies of this testimony some documents that provide further information. One comes from this year's annual report; it gives an idea of the scope of activity year-to-date in our office. The other was developed by some of the special librarians in the Council to give you a better idea of the benefits those libraries bring to the area and the concerns that they have.
I have talked about some of what we do very well. What would make our efforts more successful and our libraries even better?
- Assistance in provision of the resources our libraries need for their patrons. Traditional library materials and services are not going to go away, hence the continued importance of such programs as the Coordinated Collection Development program for academic libraries. Electronic resources clearly play an increasingly vital role as well, and they have the potential to reach an even wider audience of students, business people, and citizens who otherwise would have little or no library access. Leadership by the state could assure a quality set of databases available to all -- even those corporate special libraries which contribute so much to library resources of our regions but have been left out of the programs so far established. Support for the efforts already made by CDLC and the other 3R's could extend these programs further into all of the libraries of the state.
- Support for Electronic Doorway Library initiatives. Electronic library resources are not only expensive to purchase but they create ongoing commitments on the part of libraries. Subscriptions must be maintained, equipment must be upgraded regularly in order to access the electronic resources, and staff and users must learn how to use the resources and equipment. In addition, libraries require access to stable, high-speed telecommunications networks. These are enormous problems, and they exist for the smallest school or public library as well as for the largest research libraries. If we truly want to level the playing field for all of our citizens and make available to them the riches of electronic library resources, we need an ongoing commitment to address these problems. The 3R's and other systems stand ready to assist with cooperative purchases and technology training, but ongoing funding for all aspects of electronic library programs is vital.
Clearly, these are not the only areas of need, but they are core issues for the provision of library and information service to the people of the state.
In closing, I would note that in the Capital Region CDLC has been and continues to be both literally and figuratively the meeting place for Capital District librarians: the place where school, academic, public and special librarians come together to work together. That has been central to our success in the past and that will provide the basis for our achievements in the future. When local and regional focus is too limited, we join with our colleagues in other 3R's to work in a broader realm. The cooperative approach cited by Jean Connor 33 years ago remains the key to success today and in the future.
Thank you for your efforts on behalf of New York's libraries and library users.
______________________
Capital District Library Council (CDLC)
Special Library Members
May 20, 1999
Special Libraries in the Research and Reference Resources Community
What are special libraries? Special library members of the Capital District Library Council (CDLC) consist of libraries from associations, not-for-profit organizations, hospitals, government agencies, for-profit corporations, and libraries in academic institutions serving special programs or disciplines. The staffs and collections of special libraries may be small, but their resources are unique, with in depth focus on specific subjects, often not duplicated within the state. Without the structure of CDLC these organizations would serve their own constituencies nearly exclusively; materials in their collections would only be made available to other organizations by special arrangement and on a limited basis. Knowledge of the existence and the availability of the items in these special collections would also be limited and not readily available to most New York residents. Membership in a Research Reference and Resources (3R's) Council like CDLC opens up the resources of these collections and facilitates access to them by New York residents and researchers.
How does New York State benefit from an actively involved special library community? New York is a diverse and complex state with equally diverse and complex information needs. The economy of New York State benefits from a strong business community, which in turn benefits from, high quality, and diverse information resources. Likewise, the health of New York residents benefits from strong hospital library resources. New York is known for its richness in library resources; its richness is enhanced by the synergy between its many diverse library communities. We must support an environment where all New Yorkers have access to, and benefit from those resources through their library networks and the Research Reference and Resources Councils. As we migrate to new technologies we need to strengthen the vehicle under which cooperative resource sharing can occur to enhance and maintain a climate that supports the growth and development of all types of organizations, not-for-profits, hospitals, or businesses.
Why do we need an organization like CDLC? The 3R's provide the umbrella under which independent and state higher education, school library systems, public library systems, hospital libraries, not-for-profit, government, and for-profit libraries can all cooperate. Because of the diversity of the group, benefits derive to all participants. Without the 3R's, libraries would limit resources to their own consortia, thus restricting access by the broader community to the rich resources of those libraries. Certainly there are costs associated with such cooperative efforts: dues, interlibrary loan processing, staff time to participate in committees are examples. However, under the current 3R's structure those costs are justified and outweighed by easy access to much wider resources than any single organization can provide. While there are networks that facilitate resource sharing, they are primarily available to the larger, better funded institutions. CDLC and other 3R's organizations enable the smaller libraries to participate and benefit from these and other resources that may be too expensive for a small library's budget.
How does CDLC benefit special libraries and their clients? 3R's like CDLC provide the structure within which the special libraries of the region gain access to the collections of academic, public, and school libraries and other special libraries, and those libraries, in turn gain access to the collections of the special libraries. Without this structure, many individual contracts would have to be negotiated and maintained, often at a substantial cost. Furthermore, the services of an organization like CDLC extend the staffing of the small special library by providing cataloging, courier services, regional catalogs, easy access to interlibrary loans, and cooperative purchasing agreements. Additionally, the numerous training seminars offered to the staffs of member libraries enhance their skills without major resource expenditures.
What changes would benefit the special library community in New York State? Recognition of the benefits of the existing structure as well as additional support for expanded collaborative efforts would serve the special library community by providing leadership, technological vision, and a structure for cooperation among all types of libraries. Within this structure, vital issues for the research community can be addressed, group contracts can be administered, spiraling journal costs contained, and new technologies implemented in support of the delivery of information to New York's researchers. The archiving, retention and access to expensive scientific and technical materials which are more likely to be in electronic format will require creative solutions but could hold great benefits to the research community. As service oriented organizations, special libraries and indeed all libraries are finding their customers/ clients/patrons/students in need of "more, better, faster" on an ever escalating scale. Furthermore they are expected to accomplish these tasks with shrinking budgets. Cooperation and shared best practices are among the most effective tools we can apply to insure our future an the increasingly electronic era.
______________________
Special Library Members of CDLC
- Albany Institute of History and Art
Albany Memorial Hospital
Dudley Observatory
Ellis Hospital
General Electric, Corporate R & D
GE Silicones
Glens Falls Hospital
Healthcare Educational & Research Fund
KAPL, Inc.
New York State Assembly Information Center
NYS Dept. of Economic Development
NYS Dept. of Health
New York State Nurses Association
New York State Office of Mental Health
St. Peter's Hospital
Samaritan Hospital
Saratoga Hospital
Schenectady International, Inc.
Seton Health System
VA Medical Center
Associate Members
- Adirondack Research Library
National Museum of Racing
NYS Supreme Court Library (Troy)
Academic Special Libraries
- Albany College of Pharmacy
Albany Law School
Albany Medical College
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Do you know what CDLC did in the past year?
- filled or referred more than 4,000 interlibrary loan requests.
- paid for 75% of the ILL transactions of 20 GAC libraries, totaling $10,000.
- facilitated the borrowing of 146,784 items through interlibrary loan.
- performed 2,341 database searches at the bibliographic center.
- reimbursed full GAC member libraries a total of $4,000 for interlibrary loans.
- saved the region about $20,000 by handling a consortial purchase of UMI ProQuest databases.
- cataloged more than 2,300 items for member libraries.
- retrospectively converted more than 33,000 school library holdings.
- processed 8,732 changes to the Union List of Serials.
- distributed 60 copies of the ULS fiche.
- distributed more than 500 copies of each issue of the newsletter ReCap.
- made 8,750 courier delivery stops.
- delivered 154,004 items by courier.
- distributed $42,000 in grant monies to hospital libraries.
- distributed $127,959 in collection development grant monies to academic libraries.
- trained almost 500 people in 52 technology and Internet training sessions
- provided the regional union catalog, CaDiLaC, which has 7.7 million holdings on 2.4 million titles, and a union list of serials that has 36,000 titles to the 170 CaDiLaC and CONAN libraries.
- responded to 49 calls for assistance with managing historical records.
- set out 50 gallons of coffee and about 1200 goodies for the attendees of the 101 meetings that we have hosted at the office since July 1st!
______________________
Part of the Annual Report produced by the Capital District Library Council and distributed to attendees at its annual meeting on May 18, 1999.
Parry D. Teasdale, Phoenicia, NY
I offer these comments as a private citizen and a newspaper editor, not in any of my volunteer capacities involving libraries. My comments do not reflect the views of the New York State Association of Library Boards, the Regents Advisory Council on Libraries or the Phoenicia Library.
I am not a professional librarian, but I have been a trustee for too many years. I have two modest suggestions for the Commission:
ELECT ALL TRUSTEES
1. All public library trustees, including trustees of association and municipal libraries, should be elected by the public. The only exception should be trustees who serve on library system boards. Elections for trustees should not be held at the fall (or spring) general elections, but rather at a time set by the library.
Libraries spend public money and make policy for the public in institutions regulated by the state. It is only logical, therefore, that the people who govern libraries should be directly accountable to the public. I do not underestimate the difficulties of establishing such elections (who may vote? who pays for the elections? etc.), but I believe the benefits outweigh the obstacles. In addition to serving a high political principle, the direct election of trustees will end what amounts to de facto clubs running public institutions.
2. The standards for library directors should be raised for smaller libraries, but not to the standard that requires an MLS degree. I believe all library directors should have at least a four-year college degree. But a bachelor's degree alone should not be enough to entitle someone to serve as a library director. The state should establish or accredit a short-term, intensive program to train persons with a bachelor's degree who have been appointed director of a small library (those libraries not currently required to have a director with an MLS). The program could take place semi-annually or annually. At least part of the cost should be borne by the state.
One model for this is in the Teach for America program, which takes graduates who have not studied education, gives them a six-week educational "boot camp," and then places them as teachers in schools euphemistically referred to s "under-resourced." Many of these young people serve their two years in the program and move on. But others go on to earn graduate degrees and stay in teaching, invigorating the profession with new ideas from other disciplines. Those who leave take a new appreciation of teaching with them into whatever career they choose. Wouldn't the same be true of library service?
I urge you not to back away from higher personnel standards. A library boot camp -- call it a "book camp" -- offers a reasonable, flexible way to impose higher standards without overwhelming the resources of small libraries.
I appreciate this opportunity to address the Commission, and I wish you luck and wisdom as you address this important task.
Eric Trahan, Director
Canajoharie Library and Art Gallery
My name is Eric Trahan, and I am the Director of the Canajoharie Library and Art Gallery, a small public library in rural, Montgomery County in central New York. My library is somewhat unusual in that it is also a well respected art museum and in thata relatively small percentage of our operating income is derived from local taxation. I bring these anomalies up because I think that it is important for you to realize that there is a great diversity in the way that libraries function, and in the way that library services are delivered and paid for, in New York State. There may not be many libraries that are just like the Canajoharie Library and Art Gallery, but there are many other libraries that are unique in their own ways. Fully half of our libraries, for example, are association libraries, which means that while they perform a public function they are in fact private, not-for-profit public charities with no direct obligation to any unit of local government, or to elected trustees. Yet some of theseassociation libraries are among our most effective "public" libraries. So I want to preface all of my comments by saying that one size fits all solutions are rarely workable solutions.
Free Direct Access
That's not to say that we don't need change, or that we don't need standards and rules. I am particularly interested in the rules surrounding free direct access and the role of library systems and the state library in fostering free direct access to library service for all New Yorkers. I think its safe to say that as an academic concept all librarians as well as others active in libraries support free direct access. Of course any New York citizen should be allowed to use the resources of any public library in the state that receives state funding, or benefits from state funded services. The difficulties arise when the vagaries of local funding and geography enter the mix.
Geographic Issues
There are two geographic problems that cloud the Free Direct Access issue. The firsthas to do with system and 3R's service areas. To illustrate I'll use myself as an example. I live in western Montgomery County. Montgomery County is a part of theMohawk Valley Library Association, and the Capital District Library Council. I live 7 miles south of my local public library. Ten miles to the southwest of my house is the Cherry Valley Public Library. This library is part of the Four County Library System and the South Central Regional Library Council. Fifteen miles to the northwest of my house is the Little Falls Public Library -- part of the Mid York Library System and the Central New York Reference and Research Council. So we have three libraries all within a half-hour drive of one another which have no cooperation whatsoever -- no access to union catalogs, no interlibrary loan and certainly no free direct access agreements. This is nonsense.
But these problems also exist within 3R's councils. My library system, the Mohawk Valley Library Association, has a cooperative union catalog with the neighboring Southern Adirondack Library System (SALS), but we don't have free direct access at SALS libraries. Other states, including Connecticut, are working on true statewide free direct access and resource sharing, and New York should do the same. The geographic boundaries that divide systems and councils are almost wholly arbitrary. They have no financial basis, all systems receive funding directly tied to population, so there is no reason to continue to divide access according to arbitrary lines on a map.
The second geographic issue affecting free direct access is local library service areas. Many of our libraries have official service areas that have little or no basis in reality - they are not based on the actual area that is served or on the jurisdictions that provide funding. In fact, many of the "unserved areas" within the state are not unserved at all. There is, for example, one library in my area that receives funding from a school district yet has a village within the district as its service area. Other area libraries officially serve areas that don't legally exist -- the "villages" that they serve are not incorporated and have no recognized geographic boundaries. In other words their population figures, and thus all of their official statistics, are a fiction. A reform of library service areas and the removal of access boundaries according to system geography would do much to reduce the practical opposition to free direct access.
Financial Issues
For libraries struggling with free direct access an even more important consideration is funding. I mentioned in my preface that my library does not receive the majority of its funding from local taxation. Since we are funded largely through fund raising andendowments where someone lives isn't an issue, and we provide complete free direct access to anyone. And we aren't at all unique in this, by the way. Some of our largest and most well respected libraries provide complete free direct access to anyone. And if you analyzed the libraries that do so you would probably find that most do not suffer financially from their largess. If you can remove the financial burden sometimes associated with providing free direct access you will find that the opposition goes away. In order to preserve the free direct access that we have, and to build on it, the state must provide financial incentives to those libraries that serve significant numbers of individuals from unserved or from underserved areas.
The Future
In the future we will need more cooperation and resource sharing among libraries. Soin addition to working on the free direct access issue for public libraries we also need to develop new partnerships among libraries statewide. The State Library naturally has a role in this, and they are doing a great job with the Empire Link project. All libraries of all types should be encouraged to cooperate together to bring library services, both traditional and electronic, to as many users as possible. This may mean a restructuring of systems to promote more cooperation among libraries of different types. But all cooperation, including free direct access, will only work if it is accompanied by both funding commitments and regulatory support (for mandated professional librarians in all school buildings, for example) from the state. We must be careful, however, that such regulations don't negatively impact the diversity that is one of our greatest strengths.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my comments with you today.
Questions: Two questions grew out of my oral testimony, and I would like to add responses to those questions to this version of my written testimony.
Association Libraries, Elected Trustees and Direct Vote Budgets
It is certainly true that many libraries, both association and municipality controlled public libraries, would benefit by having their trustees and budgets voted on directly by the public that they serve. I believe that these libraries should be strongly encouraged to change their charters and funding mechanisms to increase their budgets and public accountability. But to strongly encourage some is not the same thing as requiring all. I mention above that my library has achieved success through our combined mission as a library and a museum. It is no more appropriate to require all libraries to have elected trustees and budgets than it would be to require all libraries to have attached museums.
Free Direct Access and Divergent Funding Levels
I was asked "Why should neighboring municipalities provide adequate funding to their libraries if their residents can come and use your library for free"? Part of my answer is another question. Why should all libraries be the same? Why shouldn't neighboring libraries have missions that mesh with, rather than compete with, my library? One of our neighboring libraries has a total annual budget of under $10,000, most of which is provided by a very small village. We, they, and most of our respective users recognize that their mission is not the same as ours. They are a very effective local reading room and circulating library, and serve a very localized clientele. We are more regional in nature. Is this a problem? No. In fact it is highly appropriate. Most of our other neighboring libraries are funded at levels similar to ours, and we have borrowers from their areas and they from ours. This also, is not a problem.
I realize that interlibrary competition (shouldn't it be cooperation?) is not viewed so benignly is other areas of the state. I believe that in these instances the genesis of the problem is that local communities have not faced the reality of their libraries' "real" service areas, missions and funding sources. The solutions to these problems should be local, and should involve a realignment of service areas and direct vote budgets.
I believe that most libraries that are aggrieved by free direct access have either not recognized their true missions as regional libraries, or they have been unwilling or unable to change their service areas and funding sources to reflect this reality. In any event, all of these disputes are local, and under no circumstances should they spill over into statewide policy. If a library has a genuine, unresolved problem with a rouge municipality, and a direct vote library district that includes that municipality is not an option, then possibly some denial of service may be appropriate. But the denial of free direct access must be targeted at the specific roughe municipality. It should never spill over to a general denial of free direct access by a library, however aggrieved they may believe themselves to be.
Susan H. Zappen, Chair
Capital District Library Council Coordinated Collection Development Committee
Associate College Librarian
Head of Technical Services
Lucy Scribner Library
Skidmore College
Saratoga Springs
We urge the Commission to consider the role of academic libraries in New York State. Academic libraries serve the educational needs of community residents as well as their students and faculty. Our doors are open to all. We share our books, other information resources, and our expertise.
Currently, the only state-provided funding for coordinated collection development made available to academic libraries comes from the Coordinated Collection Development Program. With that funding CDLC's Coordinated Collection Development Committee has been able to help its academic member libraries develop material collections in 44 specific subject areas. Member libraries, using their own staff and resources, then share those materials through interlibrary loan with all other libraries.
This funding which totaled $127,959 for CDLC libraries in the 1998/1999 fiscal year allowed libraries to stretch their dollars for materials by avoiding unnecessary duplication in purchasing. Last year CDLC libraries lent 96,899 items to other CDLC libraries and an additional 64,204 items to other requesting libraries. The 16 CDLC academic libraries alone lent 26,319 items to libraries just within this area and an additional 49,768 items to libraries outside of the Capital District.
Think of the possibilities presented with increased funding. More money for coordinated collection development would allow libraries to steward their resources effectively and increase resource sharing. No one library can or should try to purchase all the materials it may need. Coordinated collection development allows libraries to focus their purchases in specific areas, knowing that other libraries will be able to provide them with materials they don't own.
Libraries must provide more than books. To remain competitive and viable New York must provide access to electronic information sources as well as materials in other formats to all its residents. We urge the Commission to support increased funding for cooperative endeavors among libraries in the purchasing and sharing of materials in all formats. An example of a successful State Library endeavor, using federal funding, is the Health Reference Library, an electronic database that is now freely available to every citizen in New York State. This is a success that New York State should duplicate, increasing the number of databases available to all its citizens.
No one would argue with the statement that libraries enrich the lives of people. We urge the Commission to consider how libraries enrich the state's economy. According to the March 4, 1999, Capital Region Times Union, the 1999 "Capitaland Report" survey conducted by the Siena Research Institute determined that 69% of the business executives in the Capital Region have great concern over labor quality. You can't have a quality work force without education. You can't have education without quality academic libraries.
Capital District Library Council Coordinated Collection Development Committee Members
Rachel Baum, Upper Hudson Library System
Deborah Booth, Hamilton/Fulton BOCES
Bonnie Bryant, University at Albany
Debbie Kirsch, Sage Colleges
Beth Pakan, Member at Large
Barbara Walton, Schenectady Community College
Susan Zappen, Skidmore College