2 Funding and Support for Libraries

A nation’s budget is full of moral implications; it tells what a society cares about and what it does not care about; it tells what its values are.

–J. William Fulbright, Former U.S. Senator

Chapter Overview

The purpose of this chapter is to:

• Introduce key vocabulary.
• Answer questions that LIT students frequently ask about how libraries get their funding.
• Encourage you to advocate for library support in your community.

Funding Sources and Trends

Knowing where your library’s funding comes from, who makes decisions about it, and how library techs in similar libraries are finding ways to supplement their general funds should empower you to feel confident about making decisions about how to spend the money in the budget and help you to stay alert for organizational changes (like a new principal at a school or a demographic shift in a neighborhood) that can affect your budget. Even if you work in a library tech position that does not have responsibility for budgets and spending, you will have more forewarning of changes and be better-prepared to explain the value you add to the library if cuts ever come by knowing where your library’s budget originates and how your work fits into the overall goals and budget of your library. Furthermore, everyone who works in and values libraries should advocate for maintaining or increasing library funding (Hinton, 2021).

Many decisions about funding libraries are made by people who a) do not know how money is spent in libraries and what it takes to run a great library, b) are responsible for overseeing the budgets of a lot of other important services, and c) understand that extra funding that goes to the library will usually have to come from budgets that have been cut in other areas. There is rarely new money added to the overall budget of the city, school, or college of which the library is a part. So we who know the value of libraries have to make an argument for why it is more important to adequately fund the library than to spend the funds on other services.

• For an example of a large school district that decided to re-dedicate itself to funding school libraries, read about Boston Public Schools (Bauld, 2022).
• For examples of public library systems that have community support, look through the list of library referenda that passed (and some that failed) in 2022 (Furbee, 2023). Library referenda are ballot measures. The residents of a city get to vote on whether or not to add or continue taxes that will go directly to their public library systems’ budgets, sometimes for general operations and sometimes for specific purposes, like building new libraries.

Spending and Restrictions

Most libraries get a budget that is allocated from their organization’s general fund with additional budget lines being funded by restricted funds that are only allowed to be used for certain purposes. Restricted funds generally come from specific government grants or large donations of money. An example of a restricted fund that comes from a government grant is something we usually call “Lottery funds.” In California, part of the revenue from the sale of lottery tickets is set aside for educational uses, specifically for paying for educational materials and equipment that go directly into students’ hands, like Chromebooks, lab materials, musical instruments, and more (Lopez, 2023).

Not all of the money in the budget can be used for whatever the library needs. Instead, the money the library gets from the general fund is usually broken into a set amount for paying salaries and benefits to staff and a separate set amount for other operating expenses, like the library collection and supplies. Or sometimes there is no budget for the collection or supplies and the library worker has to work directly with their supervisor, (for example, the Assistant Principal at a school) to request each item they need to buy. Some libraries will also have a capital budget for “equipment (usually items expected to last two or more years)”, including technology hardware like computers (Evans, Saponaro, Christie, and Sinwell, 2015, p. 438). When construction or remodeling is done in a library, those funds usually come from a construction budget that the larger organization has, not from the operating or capital budgets of the library. It can sometimes be frustrating or seem counter-productive that an organization will spend a lot of money on a new library building but still be under-staffed because of budget constraints. But understanding that the money spent on the construction was not ever available to pay for salaries can at least help explain what otherwise seems inexplicable.

If your library tech job includes responsibility for making purchasing or staffing decisions, then you are likely to have to keep track of a budget. Some library techs will have autonomy to make their own decisions about how to spend the budget and their supervisor just signs off on everything. Other library techs will be asked to explain the rationale and expected outcomes of all purchases before their supervisor considers giving approval. In either case, if you have responsibility for spending a budget, it is as important to spend it all as it is to not spend more than you are allotted. Some people think that they are being good stewards of their organization’s resources if they always have money left over in their budget at the end of the year. But in libraries, the quality of the resources and services you can offer patrons is affected by how much money you can spend on new books, supplies for programs, and staff to help them. Very few libraries have a bigger budget than they need to meet their community’s needs, so saving up money that was meant to be spent on Access Services is actually a mismanagement of resources.

General Funds from the Organization the Library Serves

Schools and Colleges

Both school libraries and academic libraries get a budget allocation from the school or college they serve. In public schools and colleges, often the library’s total budget will be made up of separate budget sources from the state. Typically at any school or college library, you can also think about different pots of money (i.e., restricted funds) making up the overall budget, because the budget for books and ebooks, for example, is not allowed to be used instead for paying staff salaries. Budgets for library collections are often cut first when leaders reduce library funding because cutting the collection budget does not immediately cost anyone their job, so the cuts feel less serious. When the school or college general fund shrinks more and the principal or president must oversee additional cuts to programs throughout the school or college, then staff budgets begin to be cut, too.

Schools

School Library Journal sends out a Budget & Spending Survey regularly and usually reports the results in their magazine in the spring of the following year. They track changes in sources and sizes of budgets and also track changes in how school library media techs are spending their budgets. The 2020 survey results reported in 2021 revealed that “just over half of the dollars spent by libraries (54 percent) come from a dedicated [library media center] budget. That’s down from 63 percent in 2015 and 58 percent in 2017” (Kletter, 2021, p. 54). This trend shows that even though books, electronic resources, and other materials continue to get more expensive, school sites are not increasing the funding that they allocate to school libraries at the same rate as the costs are increasing. So the proportion of a school library’s budget that comes directly from the school’s general fund is falling and that means that more money has to be coming from somewhere else. Outside sources of funding, like fundraisers, donations, and grants, are detailed in the next section below.

Colleges

Colleges and universities have to ensure they continue to maintain a current and deep collection or else provide fast access through sometimes costly interlibrary loan, because these libraries support the research that students and professors do (Hinchliffe, 2022). The cost of electronic subscriptions rises each year and sometimes shoots up unexpectedly after a few years of stability, so even if library budgets are not cut but only kept steady for a few years, there is an “annual 5 to 6 percent gap between information resource costs and the increase in institutional income”, so the library workers soon have to start making decisions to end subscriptions to the databases based on the topics they cover and how much they are used (Savova & Price, 2019, p. 132). These decisions often target the databases that serve smaller programs because they have lower usage statistics, even though these databases are just as important to the small academic programs as is a database like EbscoHost Business Source Elite, to the huge academic programs that rely on it.

Any elimination of a subscription to a scholarly journal or any reduction in the budget for new books in the coming year will have ongoing negative effects on scholars’ access to the sources they need to inspire and ground their new discoveries. Many academic libraries intensify the work of staff and librarians so that they can make up for the lack of research sources by seeking out alternatives and providing interlibrary loan services, but when budgets are cut even more, then there are fewer library staff hours and it becomes impossible for the staff to protect scholars from feeling the effects of limited collections (Hinchliffe, 2022).

Cities and Counties

Public libraries usually get the majority of their budget from the city or county that they serve. Typically, a public library system is either overseen by a board of directors or by a specific office in the local government. If the library has a board of directors, the members of the board are either elected by the community or appointed by elected government officials. In either case, the library’s budget is set by the person or group that oversees it and those people are not library workers. Scholars who study libraries have tried to figure out if it consistently makes a difference for a library’s budget whether they are governed by an elected board, an appointed board, or a government office, but there is currently no conclusive evidence that one type of oversight structure is better for libraries’ budgets than another (Chrastka, 2023).

Generally, public library branches are part of a larger system that gets its budget from the city or county, The system director allocates the budget to the branches based on their size and on the strategic vision that the director has for the library system. A director may maintain the status quo or may establish a new vision for the system, for example, making it a priority to increase the number of programs offered or reallocating part of the budget away from existing services to support emerging services or technology. The director’s choices can result in some branch libraries losing funding and cutting hours while other branches get more funding and can expand services.

Fines as a Source of Funding

In an upcoming chapter you will read about how library fines for overdue materials affect the quality of services for patrons. In this section, we will focus on the budget implications of library fines. Traditionally, libraries charge fines for overdue materials and replacement fees for lost items. As a library tech, you should do what you can to find out where the money from fines and replacements at your library goes. Based on my interviews with library techs, it is clear that in some cases, the fines and replacement fees are collected directly by the library and are held by the library as a budget line that can be allocated for purchasing replacement copies and other materials. Most library techs I interviewed, though, explained that fines and replacement fees get paid to the larger organization of which the library is a part and they are not re-allocated to the library. Instead they are added to the organization’s budget and the library has no recognized claim on the funds.  That means the organization, not the library, keeps the fines that are collected and they do not help the library.

Many libraries are eliminating fines but still charging patrons replacement fees for lost items. Charging for replacements may make sense because it is a way to replace items when necessary and protect the collection from intentional theft. Library workers take seriously their responsibility to protect the investment that their community has made in the library’s collection. Keep in mind, though, that library workers may have to repeatedly explain to the leaders of their organizations that replacement fees paid to the organization should not be considered part of the general fund and instead should be funding that the library can claim by showing records of the replacement fees that have been charged and paid. In this way, the library workers are further protecting their community’s investment in the library’s collection because they are fighting to receive the replacement funding that they need to maintain access to popular materials. When the replacement fees do not come back to the library, it is a disincentive to charge patrons for replacements, since pursuing those payments costs staff time.

Library workers who want to improve services by reducing the access barriers created by library fines will need to consider the potential effects on their organization’s budget if they eliminate fines. Since the fines being paid are often not going directly to the library, an end to fine payments may create unexpected budget shortfalls for an organization. On the other hand, there is a cost of labor, materials, and other expenses to pursue fine payments from people who do not pay right away. Like many decisions made by library workers, it is important to consider the down-stream effects and communicate the reasons for changes before they are implemented. When proposing eliminating library fines, San Francisco Public Library calculated that fines accounted for only 0.2% of the library’s budget and, weighed against their negative effects on patrons, the library board and other stakeholders agreed that they should end the policy of charging fines for overdue materials (Long overdue, 2019).

Outside Sources of Funding

Fundraisers

School libraries that host book fairs often rely heavily on revenue sharing from these sales. A company comes to put on a book fair and the contract stipulates what percentage of the proceeds from the book fair will go to the library. School libraries generally get to keep their share of the profits rather than having to turn the money over to their school site to be added to the school’s general fund. Sometimes Parent/Teacher Associations will also give money to the school library out of the funds that they raise through various events.

Some academic libraries receive part of each year’s budget from campus bookstore profits. Most college bookstores are not run by the college itself anymore, but instead are run by big companies like Barnes & Noble or Follett. The large companies sign contracts with the college that stipulate what percentage of their profits will be given to the college and the college leadership then decides how to allocate the proceeds. Some colleges choose to give all or part of the proceeds to the library for buying new books while others give it to student government, direct-to-student textbook purchase assistance programs, grants to faculty who are writing free open education resources, or other services.

Many public libraries and some academic libraries have organized a community membership group called Friends of the Library. These Friends groups often organize and staff book sales as a fundraiser for their library. The books they sell come from the books that people in the community donate to the library. Most books that are donated to a library are not added to the library’s collection because they are not considered to be appropriate for the library due to age, condition, content, or other factors. The library has limited space and staff, and therefore must make careful decisions about what they add to the collection. Instead, donated materials are sold by the Friends of the Library or by library workers through organizations like Better World Books to raise funds that the library can use to purchase books that are in-demand. One elementary school LMT described running an annual used book sale at her school. She was able to add some books directly to her library’s collection because they were in such good condition and relevant for her students, while she sold the rest of the donations and used the funds she raised to pay for new books and other supplies she needed for the library.

Donations

Sometimes people want to support libraries directly by donating money or purchasing books that the library has requested. This is different from general book donations, which usually do not directly build the library’s collection, as I mentioned above about book sales.

An elementary school library substitute LMT described how the full-time LMT at her site manages to add to her library’s collection despite not having any budget to purchase books each year. In particular, the LMT is striving to add books that present cultures and experiences that are not represented in the aging library collection they currently have. More than one elementary school LMT I interviewed for this textbook keeps an Amazon wishlist up-to-date in case parents want to donate a book. Asking families to donate a book to the library on their child’s birthday is common.

One elementary school LMT I interviewed was in the process of deciding how to spend a $15,000 anonymous donation that the library received shortly after she started working there. Although she was more than grateful for the donation and excited at the prospect of refreshing the library’s collection, she described feeling overwhelmed because she wanted to make sure to use the donation strategically. But because she had not yet had the time and experience to create a long list of selected books to purchase she did not immediately know how best to use the sudden money. So she tried using the reports that her library management software can produce about the age of the collection in various Dewey classification ranges to determine where the collection was most out-of-date and she hoped to target those areas for new books, reasoning that up-to-date books might make students more excited to read non-fiction. But the data did not offer a clear way forward. So now she plans to use what she has heard from students about their interests to target those areas of the collection for growth. These areas include sports, animals, and planets. Even after she developed her plan for using the donation, she still struggled to find the time to make specific selections and place the orders because she is the only staff in the library and daily duties take up all of her available time. Though her assistant principal would not likely pay her to do the selection work during the summer or other times when school is not in session, she did think that her assistant principal would support her if she decided that she needed to close the library for a week during the school term to focus on spending the donation. So, a cash donation is good fortune but not without challenging aspects.

One last thing about donations. If you are the one responsible for receiving a donation at your library, make sure to acknowledge the donor. Book plates put into the front of books with the donor’s name on them are a typical way to recognize books that were donated. This is not usually done for used books, but for books that are donated on behalf of a specific person, like the child whose birthday the donation commemorates. Large money donations that pay for a specific part of the library are usually marked with a sign or plaque. And all donors should receive a message or letter acknowledging their donation and what it means to the library. This is additional work that is created by accepting donations, so it is important for library techs who are responsible for receiving donations to carve out time to do it. Donors who are acknowledged warmly are not guaranteed to donate again, but it can’t hurt.

Grants

Grants are usually one-time money to pay for specific materials or services that meet the goals of the groups providing the grants. Some grants come from non-profit organizations and others come from national, state, or local governments. Sometimes libraries or library systems are able to pilot new services by first using grant money to see if the service is popular. If the service becomes popular, then the library leaders have to decide to a) seek additional funding from their city, county, campus, etc., b) apply for new grants to temporarily fund the service a little longer (though most grantors will not fund existing services), or c) take funding away from other services and use it for the new service instead.

As a library tech you are unlikely to be required to seek grants, but it is important to stay aware of grants that your campus or city has received because your library’s services may fit with the goals of the grant and you might be able to arrange for some of the money to be allotted to the library. For example, the federal government provided emergency relief grants to schools to help with the adjustments required for safe in-person classes (Connolly, 2022). Library media techs who knew about this grant were able to use the funds to purchase supplies and library materials to support changes in their services brought about by COVID restrictions and health concerns.

Overall, surveys of library workers in 2022 showed that federal grants related to COVID recovery likely resulted in budget growth after cuts were made at most libraries in 2020 and 2021. According to John Chrastka, Executive Director of the advocacy group EveryLibrary, ‘“Some local and state government cuts that were being threatened or even instituted in ’21 are smoothing out in ’22 because the federal stabilization funds through ARPA have made it possible. What we’re seeing is the impact of federal funding into the ecosystem, either directly or indirectly’” (Chrastka qtd. in Peet, 2022).

“Direct aid to libraries was particularly critical [in 2021]; 79 percent of those responding received federal or state COVID money in the last year. […] The money was most commonly spent on COVID-related expenses, such as sanitation supplies, plexiglass, cleaning services, air filtration systems, and personal protective equipment” (Peet, 2022).

But COVID also created other new expenses or intensified the need for existing services. So, library workers also used federal COVID recovery grants for “Wi-Fi hotspots, Chromebooks or laptops, additional digital materials, outreach vehicles, and—as libraries pushed to serve patrons physically and virtually and created new positions to fill customer needs—payroll” (Peet, 2022).

Library Workers’ Own Pockets

It is pretty rare for public or academic librarians to use their own money to buy books or supplies for their library, though some do spend their own money on food or other give-aways for library programs. On the other hand, it is unfortunately pretty common for library workers at schools to sometimes spend their own money. A survey of school library workers showed that most spend $100-$299 of their own money during the school year for the following reasons:

to get what [students] needed quickly and conveniently, to obtain items for which they were not allowed to spend school money, and to avoid dealing with time-consuming purchasing and reimbursement processes—if reimbursement was even an option […] because library budgets were eliminated, reduced, or frozen. (Kammer, Atkins, & Burress, 2022, p. 1)

Common things that school library workers have felt they needed to buy with their own money include books, decorations, prizes, office supplies, cleaning supplies, and art supplies (Kammer, Atkins, & Burress, 2022, p. 11). Some elementary school LMTs I interviewed for this textbook described using their own money to buy used books in bulk for $0.50 or $1.00 each because the library has no budget to buy more.

School LMTs also come up with other creative ways to get their students what they need without having to use their own money. One elementary school LMT I interviewed was struggling to provide her students with the breadth of books that she needed in order to include stories from cultures within and beyond her students’ community. Until she can slowly add more varied books to her library, she checks out “a lot of books from the public library that I use for read-alouds. So, if I can’t afford to buy it, I at least want to share that with my students. And my [public] library just did away with their fines, so I sometimes check books out and have them for six weeks and I know I’m not going to get fined, but I want to make sure I have that book. I feel like it’s not really fair, but it’s what it is. So it’s helping me overcome budget issues.”

Why are Library Budgets Almost Always Tight?

Libraries are almost always part of larger organizations and these larger organizations’ budgets are limited by the amount of revenue they receive. For example:

• Cities generate tax revenue and also get money from the state. Their funding is mostly limited by the value of property and the amount of money that businesses are making.
• Schools get most of their money from the state and get some from their city. Their funding is mostly limited by how many students are attending and additional funding is provided for students with specific needs.
• Private colleges and universities get most of their money from tuition, federal funding for financial aid, and interest payments from large donations. Their funding is mostly limited by the number of students who enroll and how elite and prestigious they are.
• Public universities get a little more of their funding from tuition than they get from the state and they also get federal funding for financial aid, and large research grants. Their funding is mostly limited by how many students they enroll, but prestige can contribute to their funding as well.
• Public community colleges get most of our money from the state, a lot like public schools, and also get from state and federal funding for financial aid. Most of the funding is limited by how many students enroll and additional funding is provided for students with specific needs, though there is a change coming in California that will base some of funding on how many students graduate, not just on how many enroll.

Because libraries are part of organizations that have finite budgets with which to accomplish their goals, and there are other services that need funding that are part of the same organization, libraries are often in competition with other services for funding. The situation for libraries gets even harder, though, because libraries are generally considered a “cost center” of the organization. This means that the library costs money and will never generate revenue to grow the overall budget for the organization. The public library does not pay property or sales taxes to their city. The school and college libraries do not fill classrooms with tuition-paying students and the state does not pay the school or college for the time a library worker spends with students. A library worker teaching a student how to search the database so that they can successfully complete assignments in their English class does not count as additional classroom time—the state only pays for the time students are in their English class.

This is not new. In the early 1970s a librarian and journalist named Arthur Plotnik undertook a reporting project to visit and profile libraries throughout the United States. The 1970s were a difficult economic period for the United States and the negative effects of budget cuts on libraries are a recurring theme in his book, Library Life – American Style (Plotnik, 1975). Regarding school libraries in California, Plotnik (1975) wrote,

In Los Angeles, it’s been ten years since the city opened the doors of a new public library building, and some 75 school librarians provide service for more than 400 elementary schools. Orange County’s Anaheim City District is up to something even more frightening to dyed-in-the sheep-skin professionals. With Title II money, it has established 21 media-packed Comprehensive Learning Centers—super libraries—in its elementary schools. But now, so they can be staffed on district funds, it is a ‘library technician’ who leads each one, with a two-year associate degree in library science or a bachelor’s degree in anything. They work for pay between that of aides and teachers, and everyone seems satisfied with the quality of service. As it happens, there are a few who hold library degrees and still work at the sub-faculty pay rate. (pp. 160-161)

Plotnik was noting the major drop in funding for libraries and the earliest examples of the most common management strategy when funds are cut: maintain or increase expectations for service-quality while paying less for it by eliminating degree requirements. Library technicians create incredible value for libraries but they are seldom paid what their labor is worth. We are still living in the world created by the 1970s austerity measures and library workers continue to have to fight for library budgets, often defending the library against attacks by people who want to use the money for other priorities.

Those of us who appreciate libraries would argue that businesses and homeowners are more likely to want to be located in a city with a good public library and that students are more likely to stay enrolled at schools and colleges with good media centers and libraries. But most leaders of large organizations do not share our belief in the power of libraries to indirectly contribute to their organizations’ budget growth. So library workers are often lucky if we can keep the same budget from year to year and get increases that somewhat keep pace with typical inflation.

Although as a library tech in most libraries you will not have much direct responsibility for making budget requests and advocating for increases, you might hear that the way you do your job can positively or negatively affect the library’s budget prospects for the future. Experienced library leaders, G. Edward Evans, Margaret Zarnosky Saponaro, Holland Christie, and Carol Sinwell (2015) opined that though library workers in public services “may be unaware of the fact, […] all of their interactions with the public do add or detract from the library’s public image. That in turn plays a role” in funding decisions (p. 452). Certainly, treating patrons poorly can make a library unpopular and unpopular libraries are easy targets for budget cuts. But beloved libraries also get their budgets cut and even impassioned pleas from people whose lives have been improved by the efforts of library workers are not guaranteed to sway the decision of a governing board that is facing budget shortfalls throughout their organization.

As library workers, it is probably counterproductive to think about how each of your interactions or even your interactions with patrons taken all together can affect decisions about your library’s budget. But it may be useful to think about the “social return on investment” that your work provides (Evans, Saponaro, Christie, and Sinwell, 2015, p. 445). That means thinking about what is the overall good outcome for your community when you do your job in a way that meets your own standards of excellence. If you prefer a more humanistic approach rather than a financial approach, you could think of it as how much good energy you are putting into your community on a consistent basis so that it accumulates and maybe even increases by encouraging others to put good energy into their community, too.

Efforts to Improve Funding

Because library budgets are often tight, library workers may need to strategically advocate for keeping their budget the same or for increasing it when a new challenge or opportunity arises.

Using Data

Sometimes library workers may be able to influence budget decisions by using data to support their claims. In order to be ready to make an argument about the library budget, library leaders often collect relevant data. For example, in addition to the reports that library techs can generate from their Library Management System software to show how many books are being checked out and how many people have a library card, etc., many library techs also are responsible for keeping track of the types of questions they are answering and the types of requests they are getting from patrons. These data often become part of a library leader’s proposal to their larger organization to protect or grow their budget in order to meet the needs of patrons that are revealed through the data.

Alysa Hernandez, an academic library assistant, described how she keeps track of the textbooks that students check out from the library each month. Since the university does not provide textbooks to students, students have to buy their own textbooks, which can be extremely expensive. The textbooks that students check out from the library often save the student hundreds of dollars. Academic libraries pay staff to process the textbooks, circulate them, and track how much they are used because the library wants to support students’ success and save them money. The textbooks themselves are often purchased with funds from the student government, which come from fees that students pay, or from money donations that the university or college foundation has gotten, or from profit-sharing contracts between the college and the campus bookstore. So, the textbooks themselves are usually not purchased with library funds, but some libraries do use part of their own collection budget to purchase key textbooks. By tracking the number of times that textbooks are checked out at her library each month, Alysa can use those data to calculate an approximate total of the money that students saved by using the reserve textbooks. The total money saved makes a great impression on the people who provide textbooks or money donations for the library, so the data that the library assistant gathers can have a direct effect on future funding.

Other data that the library collects are less clearly connected with future funding requests, but are still considered part of making the case for support for the library. But keeping library statistics does come at a cost. As Octavio Hernandez, a Library Specialist II at North Central University, described, “it’s a bummer to know that those statistics are super important to justify library staff pay and benefits and things like that. But, in order to be efficient, a lot of things that I do, I just do without documenting them and keeping the statistics that in an ideal world we have for budgets.” Lora Diaz, a Library Media Technician III at a high school, explained that she stopped collecting some statistics, like how many students entered the library during the day, because it was clear that these data were not being used to make decisions about anything, including the budget, but she carefully keeps and analyzes circulation statistics. Circulation has increased since she eliminated fines and started a policy of automatically renewing students’ books throughout the school year. She explained, “I’m hoping that [data showing increased circulation] will lead to an increase in our budget. But I can’t see any increases in budget happening anytime soon.”

Despite the fact that there is not always a direct relationship between clear, positive library usage statistics and successful budget requests, you will often hear that

those pesky ‘stats’ you’re asked to keep up to date and accurate, and which may seem pointless when doing them, do play a positive role in library funding […] demonstrating with facts, the ‘value’ of the library’s services to the community. (Evans, Saponaro, Christie, and Sinwell, 2015, p. 436)

In my experience, if your library lacks data to support your claims about the budget you need, then that may be used as an excuse for cutting the budget. But it is exceedingly rare for data to be strong enough to get an administrator to reverse their decision to cut the library budget. Even when library workers are able to show data that suggest that budget cuts will affect service-quality and patron outcomes, most administrators will conclude that the library workers can either work harder to provide the same level of service with less money, or that a decrease in service levels is acceptable.

Organizations

If you are interested to work with others who are trying to protect or grow library budgets, you can look into the following organizations:

Your Schoolsite Council

At almost all K-12 public schools in California, there is a Schoolsite Council. Schoolsite councils are defined in the California Education Codes, which means they are required and there are certain rules that they have to follow about who is on the council and what they do. Ed Code requires the principal, some non-teacher staff, some teachers, and some community members on every schoolsite council. Teachers have to make up the majority of all the school employees who are on the council, and there have to be an equal number of community members and school employee members on the council. The California Department of Education explains schoolsite council membership this way: “the minimum number of SSC members at a school is a total of 10 (e.g. one principal or [their] designee, one other school personnel, three classroom teachers, and five parent/community and student members)” (Schoolsite Council, 2023). If you increase the number of other school personnel, then you would need to increase the number of classroom teachers and community members on the council to keep the proportions in alignment with the schoolsite council regulations. These details are important when you think about what the schoolsite council is responsible for deciding. The schoolsite council develops the School Plan for Student Achievement, which includes deciding how funding from the state should be allocated to the various needs on campus. Because the schoolsite council makes decisions about funding, it is an opportunity to advocate for the importance of funding the school library/media center so that the collection can be maintained and the educational program of the library is sustained. If you can join your schoolsite council as a parent or LMT, you may be able to use your knowledge of libraries to advocate for library support.

California School Library Association

Join or at least follow the California School Library Association for information about how to advocate for school library funding and support. Their website offers some free materials.

EveryLibrary

Follow EveryLibrary for information about efforts throughout the US to protect or grow public library funding. Their website offers free materials as well as a list of ways to get involved. They accept volunteers and interns, too.

Your own friends, family, and community

Elisa Hernandez, a Library Associate II at Escondido Public Library who contributed her expertise for this project, shared examples of how she raises awareness about the public library in her community. In her work as a substitute LMT in the Escondido schools, she has heard students at the end of the school year explain to their parents that they cannot check out any more books. Elisa has used the opportunity to explain that the family can get library cards at the public library, check out books all summer long, and not have to hassle with the two-book limit that the school library imposes. When Elisa hears parents in the community say that they need to register their kids for school but they are not sure how to do it now that everything is online, she has encouraged them to come to the public library. Even though the staff are not allowed to handle the computer for the parent and the parent is expected to have basic skills to use the computer, the staff can sometimes make exceptions and guide the parents through the steps of the school registration process. These are small but powerful ways to advocate for the value of the library. And it is part of what Elisa loves about her work, because she is able to “help the community in many ways.” By noticing areas of need, Elisa can connect people to the public library services that they are not yet aware of that can help them achieve their goals. When more people see how libraries benefit them and their community, it can help grow support and possibly offer some protection from cuts.

Sources of budget and spending trends data

• Public Libraries Survey by the Institute for Museum & Library Services
• Association of College & Research Libraries Academic Library Trends and Statistics
• School Libraries Journal Surveys

References

Bauld, A. (2022, December 20). Boston’s revolutionary pledge: A school library for every student by 2026. School Library Journal. https://www.slj.com/story/bostons-evolutionary-pledge-a-school-library-for-every-student-by-2026

Chrastka, J. (2018, May 15). Reversing the slide in voter support | backtalk. Library Journal, 14–15. https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/reversing-slide-voter-support-backtalk

Chrastka, J. (2023, February 1). Value added budgets: Budgets and funding 2023. Library Journal. https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/Value-Added-Budgets-Budgets-and-funding-2023

Connolly, C. (2022, August 17). Put ESSER dollars to work: School libraries can benefit from American Rescue Plan funds. School Library Journal. https://www.slj.com/story/put-esser-dollars-to-work-school-libraries-can-benefit-from-american-rescue-plan-funds

Furbee, B. (2023, January 3). Referenda roundup 2022: Final report. American Libraries Magazine. https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2023/01/03/referenda-roundup-2022-final-report/

Hinchliffe, L. J. (2022). Commentary: The future (budget) of the academic library. Physics Today, 75(8), 10–11. https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.5048

Hinton, M. (2021, November 1). School libraries 2021: Advocacy is a necessary part of the job for school librarians. School Library Journal. https://www.slj.com/story/school-libraries-2021-advocacy-is-necessary-part-of-the-job-for-school-librarians

Kammer, J., Atkins, C. & Burress, R. (2022). The personal cost of small budgets & underfunded libraries: Out-of-pocket spending by school librarians during COVID-19. School Library Research, 25, 1-31. https://www.ala.org/aasl/slr/volume25/kammer-atkins-burress

Kletter, M. (2021). A digital shift. School Library Journal, 67(3), 52–55. https://www.slj.com/story/During-covid-libraries-prioritized-electronic-resources-fiction-slj-2021-spending-survey

Long overdue: Eliminating fines on overdue materials to improve access to San Francisco Public Library. (2019, January). The Financial Justice Project & San Francisco Public Library. https://sfpl.org/uploads/files/pdfs/commission/Fine-Free-Report011719.pdf

Lopez, L. (2023, February 1). I-Team discovers where lottery money goes. NBC 4 Los Angeles. https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/i-team-discovers-where-lottery-money-goes/3086693/

Peet, L. (2022, February 1). Uncertain times: Budgets and funding 2022. Library Journal. https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/Uncertain-Times-Budgets-and-Funding-2022

Savova, M., & Price, J. S. (2019). Redesigning the academic library materials budget for the digital age: Applying the power of faceted classification to acquisitions fund management. Library Resources & Technical Services, 63(2), 131-142. https://www.journals.ala.org/index.php/lrts/article/view/6725