Westchester Library System
Dismisses Seven Staffers
Faced with potential cuts in next year’s state budget and a near-certain 15% loss of county funding, the Westchester Library System in Ardsley, New York, has notified seven employees they will be laid off effective March 31. The affected staff members include both support staff and librarians, including the head of the cataloging office, who is retiring. All will receive outplacement counseling.
“We’re reducing the amount of money we give to people for conference expenses and memberships, and we’ve cut our supply budget,” Deputy Director Mary Rinato Berman told American Libraries. “We reduced any piece of the budget that we could before we had to face cutting personnel.” The layoffs are expected to save a total of $250,000.
Maurice J. Freedman, WLS director and current president of the American Library Association, said, “It is incredibly disheartening to develop an organization with the highest level of service and then have to reduce services and lay off longtime staff members.”
WLS is a library cooperative that provides interlibrary loan, cataloging, and consultant services to the 38 public libraries in Westchester County. The system also plans cuts to its delivery of reserve books and cataloging to member libraries, and will discontinue the book-reviewing service it coordinates with children’s librarians in the county.
Posted December 9, 2002.
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