Budget struggles continue at the local level

State and local/regional budget cuts continued to bedevil school library media centers in 2007.

Nationally, school library expenditures per pupil decreased to $13.67 in 2003-2004 from $19.14 in 1999-2000, a drop of almost 30 percent, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a division of the U.S. Department of Education. The percentage of public schools with school library media centers has risen slightly in the past four years, but the vast majority of states have decreased their spending on books and other materials and staff, the NCES said.

If this trend continues, according to Keith Curry Lance, an independent researcher and consultant, the national per-pupil expenditure in the 2007-2008 school year will be down to $9.76 — a drop of more than 50 percent from 1999-2000. Lance was formerly director of the Library Research Service at the Colorado State Library.

The national funding picture for public libraries improved in fiscal 2005, the most recent year for which complete data are available. Public libraries nationwide received a total of $9.7 billion dollars in funding, 81.4 percent of which came from local sources and 9.9 percent from state sources (the federal government accounted for 0.5 percent of revenue, and “other” sources for 8.4 percent.) The fiscal 2005 funding total represented an increase of 6.3 percent from the previous fiscal year. A complete report on funding for and usage of U.S. public libraries in fiscal 2005 is available on the IMLS Web site.

At the local level in 2007, the funding situation for public libraries was mixed; some narrowly escaped sinking, others sailed on successfully with expansion and renovations — and some had to sail and bail at the same time.

The controversial closing of the 15-branch Jackson County, Oregon, library system was reversed in October, thanks to a responsive county commission. In Minneapolis residents hailed the opening of a splendid new high-tech Central Library — while cuts in state and local funding forced the system to close three branches and reduce hours. In Chicago, library champion Mayor Richard M. Daley linked his budget proposal to library services, banking on public affection for the thriving Chicago Public Library system to soften the blow of an $83.4 million property tax increase. In New York City, a $59 billion budget agreement announced in June funded the city’s public libraries for six-day-a-week service for the first time in six years. On the other hand, some libraries in Florida and Massachusetts struggled to keep their operations afloat as tax caps and rollbacks took their toll.

Mean salaries edge up at public, academic libraries in 2007 surveys . . .

Analysis of 2007 data from more than 800 public and academic libraries showed the mean salary for librarians with ALA-accredited master’s degrees increased 2.8 percent from 2006, up $1,550 to $57,809. The median ALA MLS salary was $53,000. Salaries ranged from $22,048 to $225,000, according to the 2007 edition of the ALA-APA Salary Survey: Librarian — Public and Academic. Salaries for 62 positions not requiring the MLS ranged from $10,707 (federal minimum wage) to $143,700, according to the 2007 ALA-APA Salary Survey: Non-MLS Salary Survey.

Published by the American Library Association-Allied Professional Association (ALA-APA), the surveys show aggregated data from more than 7,500 ALA MLS librarians and almost 20,000 non-MLS individual salaries at the state and regional levels.

. . . and professionals at research libraries do even better

The salaries of professional staff at member libraries of the Association of Research Libraries fared even better, outperforming inflation. The combined median professional salary in U.S. and Canadian ARL university libraries was $59,648 — a 4.5 percent increase from the previous year. Over the same period, inflation was 4.1 percent in the United States and 2.4 percent in Canada

The ARL Annual Salary Survey 2006–07 analyzed salary data for all professional staff working in the 123 ARL member libraries in 2006–07 (9,824 in the 113 university ARL libraries and 3,832 in 10 non-university libraries).