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California Halves Funding for Librarians’ Internet IndexThe California State Library is planning a 50% reduction in funding for the Librarians’ Internet Index (LII) website, beginning July 1. According to Tom Andersen, chief of the Library Development Services Bureau at the State Library, “We simply don’t have enough LSTA money to keep them going at the current level,” he said, adding that other grant-funded projects will also be asked to reduce their budgets for FY2007.LII Director Karen G. Schneider said her contract staff of seven, equaling 3.0 FTE, has to be cut from 115 hours a week to 72, meaning layoff for one and reduced hours for the rest. She told American Libraries that the future of LII depends on her ability to find other ways of developing revenue, which could include partnering with other states. Her budget of $400,000 is being cut in half, “and $35,000 of that is for hosting and technical support,” Schneider said. Featuring thousands of high-quality websites selected, described, and organized by librarians, the LII gets some 10 million hits per month; a companion e-newsletter has over 35,000 subscribers. Andersen noted that because the site spends California funds for a service that’s available free internationally, it’s become imperative to seek other revenue sources, and the State Library is prepared to help find them. “We don’t want to see it go away and we value it highly, but we have to look at other ways of funding it,” he said. Schneider said she was notified of the cuts February 24 and as a result decided to resign as a member of the American Library Association’s governing Council. In a March 2 letter to the board of directors of the Library and Information Technology Association, the ALA division that she represented, she said of the funding drop, “This is a devastating hit to us, after 15 years of service, and it cuts us so deeply that without alternative revenue even I, the only FT contractor, cannot stay on full-time.” Consequently, she added, “I am not in a financial situation to afford weeklong stays at conferences, which is what ALA Council requires.” Posted March 3, 2006. |
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