Show 'em You're Hurting - David Miller, Former Board President, State Library of Ohio

This article ran in the January/February 2011 issue of Rural Library Services Newsletter, Vol. 22, Issue 1, pg. 3. 
by David Miller

Public libraries should never miss an opportunity to market their needs to the public.  This is especially true when funding cuts translate into fewer new materials and fewer services.  Library board members should spend part of one of their meetings brainstorming different ways to let their patrons know how budget cuts have impacted the library.

Among the possibilities:

• Posters at check out asking patrons to be patient because you have had to reduce staff hours.
• Signs around the magazine racks telling patrons what magazines you can no longer subscribe to due to cutbacks.
• Signs on empty or partially empty shelves where new fiction and non-fiction books are usually on display.  The signs could list how much the board has had to cut back on spending for new books.  (Such signs should also be placed on the shelves for audio books, DVDs and CDs.)
• Notes on computers indicating how much the library has had to cut in line items pertaining to Internet-accessible computers (including money for new purchases and maintenance).
• Signs should also be posted inside entrances and the outside windows of doors to note any reductions in hours the library is open due to cuts in funding (identify the funding source and how much the funding has been cut).

Other areas where explanations might be needed would be in meeting rooms (if rental rates have had to be increased or initiated), local history departments (if funding cuts have had an impact on staffing or acquisitions), and the children's area (explaining reduced story times, reduced purchase of new children's books).  Given the library and its funding situations, board members may come up with many additions to this list.

Some libraries mistakenly try to hide the realities of how they are being hurt by reductions in funding.  Now is the time for total transparency in identifying how much the library has been cut in funding and the results of such reductions.

Patrons of most libraries are very vocal in their support of the library and often very passionate in their appeals to funding sources.  They need to have all the facts in order to lobby, individually and possibly as groups, on behalf of their libraries. - DCM