Library funding cuts hurt students
Public library funding was cut by $164.7 million in the past three and a half years, according to the American Library Association (ALA) Web site.
USU’s Merrill-Cazier Library is trying to find spots where $400,000 can be cut from the budget, said John Elsweiler, associate director for public services at the library.
Associate Director for Technical Services Betty Rozum said, “It’s not only our institution, it’s a nationwide significant crisis as far as libraries go. Research faculty suffer the most. Then it trickles down to graduate students suffering, then to undergrads.”
The ALA said public and academic libraries serve a vital purpose for the community.
Ronald Jenkins, director of the Logan Library, said the library has between 950 and 1,000 visitors a day. The library holds a summer reading program for about 2,000 children each year, he said.
People who cannot afford books, Internet or a computer can go to the library, Jenkins said, noting that parents, teens, children, non-native English speakers and business professionals all benefit from the library.
With an increasing number of jobs requiring computer literacy, one of the few ways people with no money for purchasing a computer can gain the skills necessary to compete in today’s job market is to utilize a library’s resources, according to a hearing on the importance of literacy held in the House of Representatives.
Jenkins said the Logan Library is “lucky to be so well-funded by the city,” but said that many libraries around the state are not so lucky.
“What is the value of libraries? Well, what is the value of preschoolers coming to storytime and learning to love reading? What’s the value of students of students coming in for school projects, for businessmen to come in and learn statistically anything they want to know about the valley, for a 30-year-old mother learning to read so she can read to her 3-year-old daughter? What’s the value? Well, if it’s you, and it answers your question, it’s probably worth a lot,” Jenkins said.
The problem that Elsweiler said USU has is online journals go up in price by about 7 to 10 percent every year, but the library budget doesn’t increase to meet that price raise. This year, the library has to find a way to cut $120,000 worth of subscriptions.
“The last six or seven fiscal years we’ve faced significant cuts,” Rozum said. “We’ve canceled hundreds of subscriptions in the past few years.”
Library staff have to choose what will have the greatest use with the least cost, and a lot of specialty journals end up being cut, Elsweiler said.
The university issued a 3.85 percent temporary cut to all departments in the university, which left the library trying to cut $280,000 from the operating and materials costs, Elsweiler said. He said the library is trying to cut materials the least, but it is difficult.
Elsweiler said book inflation is usually smaller, but last year was higher than normal.
He said funding cuts affect the university’s faculty the most, because faculty don’t have the resources to keep up with their peers or teach students with the latest knowledge.
“[The cuts] keep eroding our collection. It’s frustrating because the fields of research are expanding and our collection is contracting,” Rozum said.
Rozum said the problem is that publishers of prominent journals have the upper hand when it comes to raising prices.
“People want to get published in these journals,” she said, “and so all of the latest information in a field will be in them. Publishers know that if people want to be current, they have to buy these journals, so they can raise the price.”
Some subscriptions cost more than $10,000 Elsweiler said. He said the university supports competing journals that cost less than the big name ones.
Rozum said it will take a while, but the part of the funding problem can be addressed if people publish their research and articles in journals that are lower priced.
Elsweiler said something else that “saved” the library was second-tier tuition raises, and the collection “would have been decimated” without it.
“The students have been so supportive of the library. We really appreciate the support we do get and we’re so lucky to get this new library,” Rozum said.
The effects of library funding cuts are hurting America’s future, said Bill Gooding, from the Committee on Education and the Workforce.
“There are many things, which can destroy us internally, and most great civilizations fall from within. However, I think that functional illiteracy and illiteracy in the 21st Century could certainly destroy any hope for us to continue to be an outstanding leader in this world. We now have as many as 100 million adults in this country who are functioning either on level 1 or level 2, as far as the literacy scale is concerned. Level 1, in my estimation, there is no hope of getting a piece of the American dream in the 21st century and level 2 it will be very difficult.”
Elsweiler said the library is trying to stretch their budget as much as possible, but that the lack of funding will affect USU students’ and faculty’s ability to compete with peer institutions.