Judith Adams-Volpe, Director, Lockwood Memorial Library, University at Buffalo
Rosana Alaimo, School Library Media Specialist, Williamsville Central School District
Eliza Beth Berry, President, Friends of the Niagara Branch
Murray L. Bob, Director, Chautauqua-Cattaraugus Library System
Leon Boome, Library User?
Frank Bostic, Program Director, Pratt Willert Community Center
Mary L. Brink, Director, Nioga Library System
Elizabeth Brooks, School Library Media Specialist, Niagara Falls High School
Mary Durlak, Friends of the West Falls Library
Mary Fiore, Library User and Member, Forever Elmwood
Carolyn Giambra, Instructional Specialist, Williamsville Central School District and NYLA Treasurer
Mary Ruth Glogowski, Library Director, Buffalo State College
Peter Jakubowski, Director of Education, Erie County Juvenile Detention Center
Marilynn R. Jessiman, School Library Media Specialist, Niagara Falls City School District and Public Library Trustee
Mary Jo Ketchum (not on tape, did she leave?), Library Trustee, Elma Public Library
Rebecca Mahoney, Chair, Buffalo and Erie County Public Library Board
Catharine Marriott, Coordinator, Computer and Library Services, Orchard Park School District
Diane Melillo, Volunteer, Crane Branch Library
Ilona Middleton, Library Director, Medaille College
Valerie Niederhoffer, Greens Party
Jim Pacer, East Clinton Professional and Business Persons Association
Vincent Pasqualli
Sandy Pezzino, Director, Buffalo School Library System
Nancy Piatkowski, Documentation Projects Coordinator, Documentary Heritage Program
Janet MacGregor Plarr, Blaisdale Action Project
Bridget Richardson, Program Coordinator, Early Childhood Center 12, Buffalo
Sister Monica Riodan, Principal, Our Lady of Sacred Heart School
Daniel Sachs, Library User, Crane Library
Gail Staines, Executive Director, Western New York Library Resources Council
Dorothy Utnik, Greens Party
Ann Marie Vandercher, School Library Media Specialist, Buffalo School 11
Peter Warm, Library User
Mary Wartko, Library User
Peg Whantuk, Program Operation Specialist, Even Start Family Literacy Program
The Honorable Catharine Young, Member of the New York State Assembly, 149th District
Nancy Zimmerman, Professor, School of Information and Library Studies, SUNY Buffalo

I come today to speak to you of the cultural value of libraries, the transformation of the institution and services of libraries, and the future of this most democratic of American public institutions.

As I view my own twenty-five-year career in librarianship, I recognize that the electronic, digital library is a reality. Now, on the brink of the year 2000, libraries, especially research libraries, are at a defining moment of transformation. Our challenge is to decide what a library will be and what cultural roles it will serve in the coming millennium. Technical, budgetary, political and other environmental factors are forcing the library profession and individual libraries to make immediate fundamental cultural choices. Will the library continue to be the preserver of our cultural heritage, the repository of human knowledge, and the critical component in the free exchange of information? Will it be a digital gateway to world wide information resources and a jukebox of electronic databases? Will it be a venue for teaching information literacy? Will it be a place for self-education, learning of new skills, exercising the imagination, and a place where the community meets and celebrates its collective values? A balance among all these roles is almost certainly impossible in the future we can now visualize beyond the year 2000.

Information and computer technologies are the major factors driving the transformation of libraries. We are now at a critical juncture in our relationship with these technologies: we can allow them to shape the future role of libraries, or we can pattern these technologies to serve the chosen values of the library as institution. Technologies very definitely have "politics," political qualities that can promote either democratic or exclusionary/authoritarian agendas. And, in this case it is even more complicated -- I label information technologies as "paradox technologies" because they have egalitarian and repressive potentials at the same time.

As we consider the future mission, social roles, and shapes of libraries and their networks in New York State, it is imperative that we critically look at how the design and mode of information technologies can forcefully dictate the format and types of library services for the citizenry of New York. I will focus my comments on the effects of "paradox technologies" on four essential elements in library service:

• Access
• Information formats
• Resource allocation and cost shifting
• Networks/consortial partnerships.

Finally, I will address one major challenge, the issue of Censorship.

Access

The modes of access to information and the scope of information available are the major transformations in libraries in this latter quarter of the twentieth century. The Internet gateway to world-wide information sources, and the provision of the computer technology to efficiently access all of it have made libraries very possibly the most democratic institution in our culture. This is why most of us find our profession so rewarding. Digital technologies are facilitating ready access to published and previously unpublished information ranging from statistical data, scholarly studies, technical information, and creative works, to personal diaries, manuscripts, organizational records, and historic memorabilia. For example, the University at Buffalo Libraries, through a grant from the New York State Library and the Western New York Library Resources Council, are proud to have created and provide world-wide access to digital collections of the unpublished papers of the Love Canal Ecumenical Task Force, and the heavily graphic entries in the biennial Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence, a major architectural/planning award for successful urban redevelopment "placemaking." These two collections, which were formerly comparatively hidden in archival repositories, are now available for all the world to study and use to make our lives safer and more beautiful.

But access to enormous amounts of information and amazing digital collections now requires costly and sophisticated computer equipment and vast networks. As we continue our infatuation with the information explosion, we need to step back and recognize that it is our public institutions, generally libraries, that will provide the gateway to this information for many segments of our citizenry. The technical requirements, costs, and skills are beyond the individual means of most of our population. If we embrace these technologies and resources, then we must provide public modalities for access.

Libraries are also challenged to create effective gateways to all of this information, and to educate our citizens to the proliferation of "misinformation" that is also so smoothly facilitated by the Internet and information technologies. Information literacy skills are just as necessary as the information itself. In addition, libraries must create organizing and access systems that are responsive to the different ways we learn. Those of us born before 1980 approach information in a linear manner, reading front to back (or back to front depending on our culture), top to bottom in a detectable sequence. Emerging generations are labeled "twitchers," jumping around following intuitive, fast-paced connections. Increasingly today, one access or classification mode does not fit all.

Technology watcher and scholar Langdon Winner, in his article "Mythinformation" (in his The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology, University of Chicago Press, 1986, p. 109), warns against the assumption that ready access to information will dissolve distinctions between classes and offer major opportunities to disadvantaged groups. All of this is useless until joined with "an educated ability to gain knowledge and act effectively. . ." our instruments are useless without the opportunity "to enlighten and invigorate a human mind." Vartan Gregorian, President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, stated this year that "no search engines yet can replace the library or the experts within it, whose role it is in this age of knowledge fragmentation and information overload, to distill the best, to separate fact from opinion, to provide a structure for knowledge" (Report of the President. Carnegie Corporation, 1999, p. 8).

Information Formats

While the electronic library is definitely here today, are bookless, virtual libraries in our near future? The greatest roadblock for paperless/bookless libraries is the impermanence of electronic media. To date, the life span of digital technologies is very short. Paper has the proven record, lasting over 500 years and still counting. CD-ROMs have been found to be reliable for only five years, while digital and access technologies continually change, forcing repeated costly reformatting at the least. Extensive collections now reside in only one place on a server that allows universal access. While a "backup" may be available, these collections are controlled by an individual, group, or organization that has the power to turn them off at any time, to limit access, and to charge fees. Also, the technical requirements for access continue to escalate, limiting options for use by much of the populace. Another dark side of this fragile dependence was dramatically demonstrated to me in the last couple weeks as I looked at my library's books on art and architecture in Kosovo and Yugoslavia-these books, held by many libraries throughout the world, are perhaps the only historic record of treasures now destroyed by war and gone forever.

Resource Allocation and Cost Shifting

Information technologies are placing enormous budgetary strain on libraries today. Electronic resources and access technologies are demanded and needed by our users, yet print collections remain primary and essential, as do our physical library facilities. The lightning speed of technical innovation is changing the direction, organization, and missions of all sectors of our society. "Service" has lost its personal touch and is now accepted as provided by electronic automatons. Libraries still preserve individual, personalized service as a major value. More and more, libraries are recognized as a last bastion of on-demand, one-on-one personal consultation and assistance. But budget realities are quickly moving funding from collections, staff, and buildings, to technology and networks. The diminishing staff is also suffering collective "technostress" to a debilitating degree because rapidly changing and expanding technologies demand constant training and learning of new skills. The costs of just this training are straining library budgets.

Electronic information is shifting costs of the publication process away from traditional publishers to ultimate users and libraries. Printing is the most obvious example. Our electronic information resources have created a colossal need for printing by the end user. In the University at Buffalo Libraries, 40 million pages have been printed from computer stations between July 1998 and March 1999. In homes and offices, a similar pattern exists. There is now a gadget that attaches to personal computers to bind your own books. The "paperless society" was indeed a major pipe dream. The costs are significant to individuals, and are reaching catastrophic proportions in libraries. As a consequence, libraries are also suffering from a loss of crucial photocopy revenue. All solutions related to "pay for printing" are costly to implement, require "authentication" of users at computer workstations, and seriously impact access. Some costs for printing are inevitable, but we must keep in mind the augmented need to print as a necessary requirement for access.

Above all, our planning for future libraries must not equate access to information with merchandising of information. The costs of technologies are forcing libraries to consider becoming commercial enterprises. As we do this, we lose our role as neutral provider and preserver of information. Fees related to access to information will not enrich the library, instead they may impoverish the institution. Will we be able to continue to acquire those books on art in Kosovo?

Networks/Consortial Partnerships

Right now, we see working together and forging alliances among all types of libraries to be our best hope to achieve an operative balance that preserves the values, mission, and services of our libraries. Commercial vendors of information products provide favorable pricing for consortial groups due to the opportunity for increased volume in sales and usage. Technical expertise can be shared across many libraries; networks can be developed serving groups of libraries and providing access to a much broader array of information resources; document delivery systems can effectively expand access to collections and resources. The vast libraries of the State University of New York have been vital partners with our public libraries in service to the State's citizens. SUNY's assets in collections, staff expertise, technologies, networks, and sharing of resources are key to public library strength and effectiveness in our State.

In our Buffalo region, all of our libraries have been enriched, improved, and made significantly more effective by participation in our regional organization, the Western New York Library Resources Council. We all have benefited specifically from sharing of collections and document delivery, State funds made available for technical advances and service enhancements, crucial training opportunities, sharing of expertise and innovative services, advocacy efforts for State funding. As you, the Commission, sketch the structure of library services across New York, I urge you to maintain and strengthen the vitality of the regional libraries organization so that public, academic, business, and special libraries can work as partners to increase our collective impact on our communities. WNYLRC's recent higher visibility, achieved by training and professional development opportunities, as well as expanded Statewide advocacy, and the leadership of Executive Director Gail Staines, has given us a glimpse of future potentials and hope that we can preserve our basic library values in the face of imposing challenges.

Censorship

Finally, I would like to comment on the issue of censorship, in its broadest context. When we think of censorship, high-profile challenges to particular books in public libraries generally come first to mind. It is a critical issue too, in research libraries because it is these institutions that preserve the historical record. Librarians and archivists have been murdered by many political regimes so that records could be altered or destroyed. Today, the Internet has generated great societal concern about the harmful effects of insidious pornography and violence easily available to any computer user. The American Library Association recently led a successful court battle to strike down a federal statute that would have held any institution, including libraries, legally liable for simply providing the network a minor could use to access pornography on the Internet. In the past weeks, we have all suffered the pain of the influence of easily accessible violence on adolescent minds. The issue is a clear demonstration of how a technology that promotes the democratic value of access can at the same time also promote harmful trends and terrible suffering in our society. The Internet is a "paradox technology" indeed, and we must be aware that answers can not be simple or obvious, we need collective wisdom. We must find a means to protect the vulnerable in our society while recognizing that censorship is a central threat to our essential democratic values.

Some words of wisdom from Lewis Mumford, written in 1964, are still remarkably apropos of our libraries in our information age:

We had better map out a more positive course: namely, the reconstruction of both our science and our technics in such a fashion as to . . . sacrifice more quantity in order to restore qualitative choice, shifting the seat of authority from the mechanical collective to the human personality . . . above all, reducing the insensate drive to extend the system itself, instead of containing it within definite human limits. ["Authoritarian and Democratic Technics," Technology and Culture, Winter 1964, p. 8.]

Rosina Alaimo, School Library Media Specialist, Maple West Elementary School, Williamsville

Good evening and thank you for allowing me a few moments of your time. My name is Rosina Alaimo. I am a certified School Library Media Specialist. I work at Maple West Elementary School in Williamsville, a northern suburb of Buffalo, New York. I am active in several professional organizations currently serving as treasurer of the School Librarians' Association of Western New York and as secretary of the School Library Media Section of the New York Library Association.

I am here today to speak about the need for certified library media specialists in elementary schools especially city schools.

On my first trip to Albany to lobby for library legislation, I was surprised to hear a legislator say, "I can understand the reason for funding high school librarians, I can understand the reason for having public librarians, but who do we need elementary librarians?"

Let me tell you why we need Library media specialists at the elementary level. Library media specialists:

• provide access to information
• teach how to find information from many sources
• teach how to evaluate, analyze, and synthesize information
• provide electronic access to information
• prepare students to be lifelong learners
• support the curriculum with appropriate material -- print and nonprint
• collaborate with teachers to plan, implement, and evaluate literacy projects
• promote information literacy

Library media specialists are trained to guide students through the process of gathering, analyzing, and synthesizing information. These skills are required if students are to meet the new higher standards.

Several years ago, Keith Lance set out to prove that there is a correlation between student achievement and the presence of a certified school library media specialist in the school. This study is known as "The Lance Study" or the Colorado Study. This study proved that reading scores improved in schools where a strong library media center staffed with a certified library media specialist exists. In a small way, I can make the same claim today.

On April 12, 1999, the Buffalo News published the Elementary School Report Card in Reading. I compared the reading scores achieved by students at the various schools where I was the library media specialist. I think the statistics are revealing and support the contention that there is a correlation between the presence of a full-time library media specialist and student achievement in reading.

Before my current position in Williamsville, I worked in Buffalo. During my tenure in Buffalo, I was assigned to 4 different schools. The first year I worked at Indian Park Academy #70 for 2 days a week and at Academic Challenge #6 for 3 days a week. The 2nd year I was assigned to School 80 for 3 days and school #70 for 2 days a week. And the third year I was assigned to Hillary Park Academy #27 for 3 days and School 70 for 2 days.

As you can see, the only consistent assignment was 2 days a week at School 70 for 3 years. But 2 days a week at one school and three days at another doesn't make sense -- nor does it further student achievement. Let me prove my point by citing some scores:

School	Grade Level	Enrollment	Grade
#27	3-8	367	3 65 35 14 11 6 62 49 26 21
#80	pre-K-8	598	3 67 29 13 12 6 69 52 34 17
#70	3-6	262	3 80 57 43 34 6 85 74 62 38
City Honors	5-12	859	6 100 97 92 87
Maple West	K-4	581	3 98 91 75 67

Now I realize that a study needs many more statistics than the few I have given you today to be meaningful. However, small as my sample is, these statistics show that those schools with full-time library media specialists in place do reflect higher achievement in reading scores. Were it possible to have a chart showing all the schools, and all the scores, and the staffing, it would be fairly obvious that students with access to a library media center staffed by a full-time certified library media specialist do achieve higher scores.

Unfortunately, my statistics also show that city children, those children who need library services the most, are being denied the services they need. Public libraries close their doors at 5 p.m. and school boards, when faced with the necessity to make cuts, will cut programs that are not mandated. They look at the bottom line only. You, ladies and gentlemen of this commission, have the opportunity to look at the "big picture." You may strongly recommend that library media specialists be mandated at all levels. You can make the difference in a young child¹s education. You can make it possible for that child to have access to all the benefits of a library media center program in his school.

I feel that my presence at Maple West has made a difference for my students. But my children come from homes that value education. My children come from homes filled with books and with parents who take them to the public library almost daily. My children have access to a public library every evening till 9 p.m., Saturdays and even Sundays during the school year. My children have access to their school library media center every single day. My children have a certified, full-time library media
specialist to guide their inquiry-based learning. City children don't have these luxuries. How are these children to achieve? How are these children to acquire the skills they need to meet the rigors of new state assessments?

Ladies and Gentlemen -- Let's make it possible for all students to meet the higher standards. After all -- student achievement is the bottom line!

Mary Brink, Executive Director, Nioga Library System, Lockport

Good afternoon. My name is Mary Brink. I am the Executive Director of the Nioga Library System. I have been the director for almost 12 years and have been an employee of the System for almost 24 years.

Nioga is one of the smallest of the 23 public library systems in New York State. We have 21 chartered member libraries. Two of the member libraries also have branches. We also provide services to two state correctional facilities in Albion and three county jails.

We have some very small and underfunded libraries within the NIOGA Library System and we have several larger libraries, but none so large as this Central Library for the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library.

Most of the funding for the 21 member libraries comes from local sources---school districts, towns, villages and a city. Each of the three counties provides support to the libraries, but the bulk of the libraries' support comes from the very local sources. The largest operating budgets are in the $1 million range and the smallest are in the $30,000 range.

Eleven of our member libraries are chartered as association libraries; five are school district public libraries and five are municipal public libraries. Currently eight of the libraries have public votes on their budgets. The other thirteen rely upon the town boards or city council to appropriate funds for the library.

The Board of Trustees of the NIOGA Library System wanted someone from the System to provide testimony before the Regents Commission on Library Services. The Board President had intended to be here today, but had a last minute emergency and so I am here representing the Board.

Public library service is the basis for all library service anywhere and services to children and their parents or caregivers is the basis for all public library service. And the public libraries in New York State need an overhauling very badly. They have needed an overhaul for many years and this Commission is the latest attempt to get public library service back on track and moving forward.

I wish the Commission good luck. You have a huge task before you.

Forty some years ago the State of New York created public library systems to facilitate public library service to the residents of New York. Public library systems have succeeded in doing this despite years of benign neglect from the Regents, the various Commissioners of Education, the Governors and the Legislatures. The first thing the Commission should recommend is that the Regents and the Commissioner must include annual increases in funding for public library systems in their legislative proposals each and every year.

I understand that Commissioner Mills has a very pragmatic view of the Department's annual legislative program. He wants to be able to have a list of wins each year as the Regents review his performance. I can understand that, but I don't think the Commissioner or the Regents have any idea how demoralizing it is for us out here in the field to have the Commissioner refuse to even advocate for an increase in general operating aid for library systems on an annual basis. Libraries and library systems are like school districts, in that we need money to function, and for too long we've been told you don't count by the very people who created our institutions. This needs to stop.

Adequate financial support for public library systems is only part of the solution to the problems and challenges of providing public library service to the residents of New York. The other issue is getting local public library trustees to recognize that their local public library, just like their local school district or town, needs money to provide services.

Too many times the trustees of a local public library do not have a vision of what library service should be or could be in their communities. Therefore, they are content to live with what town boards or city councils are willing to allocate for the public library. They are too timid to go in and convince the town board or the city council to provide additional funds so that the library can provide additional services.

Too many of the town boards, mayors and city council members think they are providing adequately for the public library and they aren't about to increase the amount unless someone makes a fuss.

I'm not sure how to resolve that problem, but I think we need to acknowledge that these three situations have contributed greatly to the uneven quality of public library service in New York State.

Another complex and not quickly resolved challenge to the development of public library service is the outdated charters of public libraries.

To that end the Nioga Board has several suggestions for the Commission.

1. The Commission should recommend that the charters and chartered service areas of every public library in New York State be examined and that the boundaries of every public library be made to correspond to some already existing and acknowledged municipal or school district boundary. In this process all libraries will become public libraries and the "free" association libraries will disappear. The Commission need not mandate nor even suggest what municipal boundaries each and every library in New York State will encompass. That decision should be worked out among the local library boards, the public library system and Library Development. The recommendation to examine and change charters and chartered service areas is likely to start a political firestorm. If the Commission gets too detailed in its recommendations the war will be lost before the first battle is fought.
2. In conjunction with re-chartering, the Commission should recommend that the State provide financial incentives to encourage mergers of public libraries. In some areas there are too many public libraries, some of which are providing inadequate public library service due to lack of vision and lack of funding.
3. The Commission should recommend that charters for public libraries be reviewed and re-accredited every five years by the State. The review process should be based on a set of objective criteria, one of which would be is there adequate support from local sources to provide adequate public library service. The Education Department has put a lot of time and energy into developing and implementing School Report Cards and the Department should be instructed to develop a similar assessment tool for public libraries.
4. The Commission should recommend that increases in public library budgets be voted on by the taxpayers of the library's chartered service area. Again, in all but the largest cities the taxpayers are given the right to vote on school budgets. Why shouldn't taxpayers be given the right to vote on library budgets? But first we need to deal with the public library charters and official chartered service areas.
5. The Commission should recommend that the Regents and the State Education Department make provision for chartering and registering reading centers, particularly in the more rural parts of New York State. Reading center charters should be reviewed and re-accredited every five years. A reading center's charter could be upgraded to a library charter when the reading center meets revised minimum standards for public libraries including a provision that the library must have a full-time paid library director with a masters degree in library service.
6. The Commission should recommend revisions to the state aid formulas that provide funding to public library systems. The present formula includes per capita funding for people living outside of official chartered service areas. If all of the population is within official chartered service areas, the systems will lose funding.

Mary Durlak, member and officer
Friends of the West Falls Library

Library Service: Whose Definition?

My name is Mary Durlak and I live in West Falls in the Town of Aurora. I'm a small business owner and a member and officer of the Friends of the West Falls Library. However, my real credential for making a presentation to this Commission is that I'm a life-long library customer. For over forty years, I've visited a local library twenty to forty times a year.

Recently, I went to a local drugstore to get a roll of film developed. I had a lot of options: 3-inch prints or 4-inch prints; free film or free double prints; next-day delivery or one-hour delivery.

However, I didn't want the giveaways; I didn't need extra prints. What I wanted was to spend a dollar less, and get a roll of film developed within a couple of days. That option wasn't available.

In our community, West Falls in the Town of Aurora here in Erie County, we're facing a similar situation with our local branch library: we are being offered a list of options for the future. However, what we want is a community library that's open more hours. That option is not on the list. Instead, we're facing the loss of our library. Other library users in the Buffalo and Erie County system are facing the same problem.

Library professionals are concerned that they are not providing us with the best possible library service. In their zeal to improve library service, however, they are imposing upon us their definition of "excellent service."

 In order for the Regents Commission on Library Services to fulfill its mission of "articulating a vision for library service in the next century," the Commission has taken the necessary first step: to allow us, the library users, to define what "excellent library service" means.

Library service means, first and foremost, open community libraries. And the open hours should include hours convenient for working people.

Secondly, libraries need to collect data about their customer base to identify prime users and their needs. For example, here in Erie County, a system-wide reorganization has been proposed. However, the library does not know who is using its services -- students, adults, retirees, men, women. No demographic data exists.

In the absence of data, suppositions abound. One local legislator believes that the West Falls library is a disservice to the students in our community, because our small library doesn't provide enough resources for completing homework assignments. This may be true; however, no evidence exists that this is a primary need in our community.

What we do see as a primary need is the presence of a local library to help us maintain our sense of community. A "big box" library, a discount retail approach to disseminating books and tapes, may provide us with more sources of information. But it takes away one more institution that enables us to know who our neighbors are. This simple information, information that our library founders took for granted, is increasingly difficult to obtain.

This community aspect of local libraries is what separates libraries from the World Wide Web, from Media Play, from BlockBuster Video and Amazon.com, from the scores of educational TV channels as well as the hundreds of channels of entertainment TV. If library systems ignore this aspect of their role in our lives -- community centers, a common destination for neighbors, a place for people to meet each other -- then public library systems are cutting off the legs they stand on.

Maintaining a presence as a community-based institution is the single service provided by public libraries that cannot be duplicated by anybody else. We hope that you will continue to provide it to us.

Carolyn Giambra, Instructional Specialist in the Williamsville Central School District

Good Evening, members of the Commission. I am Carolyn Giambra, Instructional Specialist in the Williamsville Central School District, responsible for business Education, School To Work programs, federally funded programs, and the Library Media program. I am Past President of the School Library Media Section of the New York Library Association. I am Treasurer and a member of the Executive Board of the New York Library Association. I am Chair of the National Task Force for the Implementation of the new information literacy standards and guidelines of the American Association of School Librarians, a division of the American Library Association.

The elementary students of New York State have been waiting 70 years for equitable access to the services of a library media program in their schools. Secondary school library media specialists have been mandated since 1929, when Herbert Hoover was President. Yet, library media specialists in elementary schools are not required, creating a 7-year gap in library service for the young student in many urban, suburban and rural areas of our state. The perception of some policy makers is that this is a problem only in New York City and the Big Five school districts. It is not. While in Buffalo, you could also visit schools in Lackawanna, Tonawanda, Newfane, and Niagara Falls, to name a few, where no elementary service is provided.

Early literacy skills, including information literacy, are introduced, taught and reinforced in early primary grades. Early primary students are trying to acquire those skills without the instruction, reading guidance, and collection development of certified library media specialists. High reading achievement in that environment is an impossible task, as many of our school report card scores reveal.

Student achievement increases in schools with library media centers that have certified staff, adequate budgets, and integrated programs. If you want to improve student achievement in reading, improve school library media centers.

Currently, our elementary students are waiting for you to correct the disparities among school library programs in New York. After 70 years, some boards of education and some school administrators still have not corrected these inequities voluntarily, in the face of a plethora of research to support a site based or local decision. These disparities exist between our urban areas and the rest of the state, between school districts, and between schools within a district.

At these hearings your are being asked to increase funding of libraries, to improve electronic access, to overcome physical and cultural barriers. Of course, I agree. But none of these improvements will impact on the education of a young child in a school building that has a library, but not a library program. I make this point, because in a school, there will always be a place called the library by the principal and Board of Education members. But, without a program being implemented in that space, young students will see bags of National Geographics donated for tax purposes, a place to hold teas and meetings, and something filling the shelves, but they will not know, for the first seven years of their education what a library program will give them. They will be denied this reading support.

Why have these inequities continued for 70 years? What Kindergarten student (and now prekindergarten students, as well) must wait 7 years for a program? Which student deserves to be denied the assistance needed to become literate?

New Yorkers have high expectations and are proud of our educational system. We have long considered our school systems to be superior to other regions of the country. Yet in this area, we lag far behind states like Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Wisconsin, Colorado, and California, to name a few, in recognizing the value of the elementary library media specialist. We are in the small minority, in this regard. Most states in our nation require library media specialists in all schools, with some exclusions for very small populations.

I implore you to make the primary recommendation of this Commission that certified library media specialists be required in ALL schools, for ALL the children of New York, so that ALL students may learn and succeed.

Thank you.

Gail M. Staines, Ph.D., Executive Director
Western New York Library Resources Council
Thursday, May 13, 1999, Buffalo, NY

Welcome to Buffalo! My name is Gail Staines and I am the Executive Director of the Western New York Library Resources Council. WNYLRC, as we are known, is one of nine 3 R's Councils in New York State. We serve all types of libraries - academic (both private and public), school (both private and public), public, nonprofit/special, hospital, and corporate libraries in the six counties of Western New York. Presently, we have 98 member institutions, including both libraries and library systems. WNYLRC serves an area of 1.5 million people in over 4,800 square miles.

I know over the course of the next few weeks you are going to be hearing testimony from various constituencies with interests in libraries and library services in New York State. You will hear many stories about how libraries have changed people's lives - from a person getting their dream job because they did research at a public library with a help of a librarian, to a patient receiving lifesaving surgery in part because a medical librarian was able to locate the most current information on a procedure and was able to get the information within minutes to their physician, to a business owner who was able to double their revenue because of research done through searching appropriate electronic databases with a librarian's assistance.

You will also hear suggestions on how library services and resources can be improved to the people of New York State. As a leader of one of the multitype library systems that provides invaluable services such as training, automation, resource sharing, and aggregated pricing for access to information in electronic format, let me share with you what I see as critical to the success of improving library services for all New Yorker's in the next millenium.

Improving Library Service for all New Yorkers

• Long term, stable access to a core set of electronic databases via statewide pricing: The New York State Library's EmpireLink program is moving in the right direction. All New Yorker's, for the next 3 years, have unlimited access to the Health Reference Center and soon to Carl UnCover's newspaper databases. Once a core set of databases are in place, each region, through the 3 R's Councils, can negotiate pricing and provide access for region-specific databases.
• Support of distance learning: Libraries, in collaboration with the education community, need to respond to New Yorker's need to learn in real time. This goal is easily met, in part, by creating a statewide catalog of all library holdings. Linking could be accomplished by connecting each 3 R's regional union catalogs (of which there are 9) with one interactive interface. I would also encourage the Commission to make sure that libraries are included in any distance learning/telecommunications initiatives. It's not just building the technology infrastructure that is important, it's also the quality of information accessible via that infrastructure that makes the teaching/learning process effective.
• Statewide contract for document delivery: Such a contract with FedEx, UPS, or another document delivery vendor would drastically improve the cost effectiveness of delivering books via interlibrary loan within each region and throughout the State.
• Support for the development of the knowledge worker: Librarians and libraries play a key role in the area of workforce development through teaching information literacy skills at all levels - whether it be to teaching elementary school students how to search the library's online catalog for books, to teaching students in junior high school through college and postgraduate work to search for information in all formats, print and electronic, effectively; to teaching business people how to locate key information to improve productivity and revenue; to teaching senior citizens how to find information related to consumer health or leisure. I would argue that making connections between the 3 R's Councils, member libraries, the Regents and the new New York State Learning Standards is crucial to our survival economically in New York because we are educating the future generation of knowledge workers in our society. A prime example of in roads that have been made in this direction is Electronic Doorway Library (EDL) funding. Through EDL funding, WNYLRC was able to create an interactive web site of indexing to local publications, such as The Buffalo News. This web site, which some of you have seen and used, called the Western New York Index, does three things: it provides access to unique, local information; teachers and librarians, collaborating, have created a bank of lesson plans that meet the New York State Learning Standards that all teachers can use, and it is an interactive teaching/learning tool in that it teaches students information literacy skills of searching for, locating, and finding information using both traditional print as well as electronic sources of information found both on the web and in the library. Think of the possibilities if we could once again have EDL funds.

Being Innovative

Someone suggested to me recently that if the library community wants more funding, we should present something new and innovative to the legislature. My suggestion is that we look to the West for that innovation. In California, two new projects are currently underway -- one by the California State University to select a core list of full-text electronic journals that will be available to Californians; the other, endorsed by the California State legislature, has created regional multitype library systems to meet the regional and statewide needs of the people of California and to assist in the new Library of California.

In closing, let me share with you a comment from one of WNYLRC's member libraries. This is from the WNYLRC Member Survey that I just completed on Tuesday. "The Western New York Library Resources Council and other 3 R's have allowed many libraries to survive and prosper. It is challenging to offer quality, cost-effective services to such a diverse population of library types. You have done much with little over the years. Continue pursuing greatness."

Dismantling the library systems we currently have in place would be disastrous. The systems and governance we have now work well. Let's build on the solid foundation we have in place as we go into the new millenium.

Thank you.

Revised September 15, 2000 -- am