...to solve the famine woes of Ireland. I have an equally intriguing solution to for library budgets. Like many libraries across the nation and around the world, my system has had one shortfall after another since the economic meltdown under Bush.
Last week we learned that in the next FY our system has an anticipated budget gap of $8 million dollars. Our fearless leader explained that they have to either find the money somewhere or they have to cut out of the budget. In libraries 80% of our budget is generally allocated to salaries. We are a labor intensive organization because basically we are a service organization. Books although expensive do not add up to the cost of someone processing them, retrieving them, checking them back in and putting them back on the shelf. The cost of each book is a one time fee, the cost of the people touching that book is a recurring fee for the life of that book. That is assuming that the item is something that people want and not something that languishes on the shelf for an indefinite period of time.
So what to do? The first step happened several months ago when 40 part-time people were laid off. That was black day for me because I lost a good employee. Our materials budget has been trimmed about as lean as it can really get. Once again this isn't where the bulk of the budget is anyhow. The next step is probably cutting service hours. But I have run a business before and I know that there is no real savings in just closing the building some hours a week. You are still paying rent and there has to be some climate control because there are computers that require a degree of comfort. And since we do not live in Alaska but in a Mediterranean climate that requires cooling for a significant part of the year. No real savings there. So once again we are back to people. By cutting hours you can start enacting more aggressive lay-offs. I am not looking forward to this next FY at all.
Here is my solution to meet the budget short falls that library systems in general are experiencing to prevent further lay-offs. Libraries like to have people leave them $ when they pass on. The Waikiki Library in Honolulu unexpectedly received $2 million dollars when snowbird who used the library on his trips to Hawaii passed away. What a windfall. So libraries do pursue donations of this type and try to make people aware that you can will your money to libraries in much the same way you might to an animal shelter.
So here is where we get creative. Library Systems can develop a crack teams with two prongs. The first prong would be the business suited smooth talkers. They identify people in their service area that have substantial resources and are library users. They approach these people and convince them to sign their trusts over to the library upon their demise. Once a reasonable amount of time has passed to lower suspicions, then the second team is activated. The purpose of this unit would be to make sure that the donors met an untimely accident. The library system become the beneficiary and hence valuable jobs are saved. Budget problems solved, end of story.
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