The Finance Of Public Libraries

The Bottom Line: Managing Library Finances Volume 15, Number 4, 2002

ISSN 0888-045X

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The finance of public libraries Guest Editor: John T. Furlong

Contents 150 Access to The Bottom Line: Managing Library Finances online

Columns

151 Abstracts & keywords

174 Economics Glen Holt

152 Guest editorial John T. Furlong

175 Spotlight on financial issues Eileen Fitzsimons

Features 154 Cost benefit analysis: a summary of the methodology Glen Holt and Donald Elliott 159 Valuing your public library: the experience of the Barrie Public Library, Ontario, Canada Adele Kostiak 163 Private funding for capital projects Donna D. Nicely 167 Plain English collection budgets: a collection plan for public libraries Lorna Truck

178 Internet John Maxymuk 180 Book reviews Kay Ann Cassell and Marina I. Mercado 183 Dollars with sense Betty Anne Wilson 186 Fundraising Jennifer F. Paustenbaugh 189 If you want my 2¢ worth Kent C. Boese 193 Awards for Excellence 195 Note from the publisher 197 Author and title index to volume 15, 2002

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Contribution to Your Community – a manual developed by Southern Ontario Library Service. This article describes our experience with the manual, why and how we did the study, our key findings and the results of the work.

Abstracts & keywords

Private funding for capital projects Donna D. Nicely Keywords Libraries, Funding, Capital projects, Private sector, Construction management, Fund-raising Over the past few years, librarians have come to the realization that it is essential to have private funding to augment public resources for major capital projects. Use of private and public funds can have beneficial effects for the library. The funds can be used in a variety of ways to enhance the project and to help provide for future library programs and services.

Cost benefit analysis: a summary of the methodology Glen Holt and Donald Elliott

Plain English collection budgets: a collection plan for public libraries

Keywords Cost benefit analysis, Economics, Libraries, Project management, User studies, Methodology

Lorna Truck Keywords Public libraries, Collection management

This paper summarizes the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) approach to estimating the dollar value of services offered by public libraries. The rationale behind a CBS approach is discussed and a methodology is proposed for a quicker, cheaper CBA applicable to mid-size and smaller libraries. Valuing your public library: the experience of the Barrie Public Library, Ontario, Canada Adele Kostiak Keywords Consumer attitudes, Value, Value analysis, Libraries, Public libraries The Barrie Public Library undertook a study to document its social and economic contributions to the local community. We used The Library’s

The public library of Des Moines has addressed problems of a neglected materials collection and inadequate materials budget through a new and innovative collection plan based on quantifiable local standards. The library measures median collection age, and shelf availability of recently circulated items. The collection plan is based on a standard size determined for each library collection. Items added each year equal the number of items withdrawn. Collection budgets are calculated using formulas that will provide a five-year median age and at least 50 per cent availability in all types of materials. The library has succeeded in reducing the median age from 16 to eight years and has achieved 50 per cent availability in almost all collection areas.

The Bottom Line: Managing Library Finances Volume 15 . Number 4 . 2002 . Abstracts & keywords # MCB UP Limited . ISSN 0888-045X

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Guest editorial

About the Guest Editor John T. Furlong is Director, Brentwood Public Library, Brentwood, Missouri, USA.

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Public library finance managers give us the insight we all need Although it’s been over a year in the making, the timing of the release of this issue of the journal could not be more appropriate. The recent economic downturn has left public libraries scrambling, to find not only alternative sources for funding, but also proof for taxpayers of the worth of their local libraries. The economic climate adds increasingly to the pressure placed on public libraries, including: continued budget cutbacks, rising prices for materials and the need for new technologies, even though public library usage typically increases in difficult economic times. The articles within, offer new and innovative ways of library funding and collection development, no matter what the economy. Glen Holt and Donald Elliott (Cost benefit analysis: a summary of the methodology) give us an introduction to the methodology of cost benefit analysis (CBA) as it applies to libraries. Their team received grant monies from the Public Library Association and the Institute of Museum and Library Services to study the value of the services that a public library delivers to its constituents. Economists have used CBA for many years, but this study is one of the first to apply its methods directly to public libraries. Along the same lines, Adele Kostiak (Valuing your public library: the experience of the Barrie Public Library) describes how her library documented its social and economic contribution to the local community. The library realized that in its growing community, tax-funded institutions were competing for strained local monies. After the comprehensive study, the library saw an increase in both its operating budget and community partnerships. The Nashville Public Library recently completed a major building campaign, resulting in a stunning new main library and five new branches. Donna Nicely, director of the Nashville Public Library, tells us in her article (Private funding for capital projects) of the role private funding played in the completion of her project. The library had not attempted such a high level of fundraising in the past, but as a result of their new initiative, the library’s foundation amassed over $10 million in assets 152

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and earned the admiration of the city’s civic leaders. The newfound money allowed the library to include strong architectural elements in its new buildings and add valuable new holdings in its collections. The Des Moines Public Library found an innovative way to keep their collection vibrant. Lorna Truck explains in her article (Plain English collection budgets: a collection plan for public libraries) a precept to establish benchmarks to measure their collection and set goals for its continued excellence. Using the theories of Ray Kenagy, along with their own quantitative formula, they improved the vitality of their collection, reduced the waiting time for popular materials, streamlined their collection size and increased overall circulation by 18 per cent.

The columns and book reviews in this issue continue our theme of financing in public libraries. Kent Boese offers us the thoughts of Susan Hildreth, city librarian, San Francisco Public Library, on various aspects of funding in public libraries. It has been a pleasure working on this special issue. Although the articles and columns deal specifically with public libraries, I hope that librarians in all aspects of the field can learn from them. I would like to thank Jim Walther, the editor, for giving me the opportunity to learn more about my profession with this issue. I would also like to thank Kay K. Runge, director of the Public Library of Des Moines and fellow editorial advisory board member, for her endless hours of work she devoted to this special issue. John T. Furlong

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Cost benefit analysis: a summary of the methodology Glen Holt and Donald Elliott

The authors Glen Holt is Executive Director of the St. Louis Public Library, St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Donald Elliott is Professor, Southern Illinois University of Edwardsville, Edwardsville, Illinois, USA. Keywords Cost benefit analysis, Economics, Libraries, Project management, User studies, Methodology Abstract This paper summarizes the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) approach to estimating the dollar value of services offered by public libraries. The rationale behind a CBS approach is discussed and a methodology is proposed for a quicker, cheaper CBA applicable to mid-size and smaller libraries. Electronic access The research register for this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregisters The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0888-045X.htm

The Bottom Line: Managing Library Finances Volume 15 . Number 4 . 2002 . pp. 154–158 # MCB UP Limited . ISSN 0888-045X DOI 10.1108/08880450210450915

Introduction Throughout the world, library researchers have initiated projects designed to estimate the dollar value of services offered by public libraries. Recent efforts now occupy individuals or teams in Norway, Germany, Brazil, New Zealand, Canada and the USA. Almost all of these projects rely on the tools that are part of the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) technique by which to estimate library-services value. Interest in this application remains high as demonstrated in the number of requests for presentations and articles that our team has had from library professionals in the USA and abroad. At the beginning of this project, we laid out our methodology steps of CBA (Holt et al., 1996). This special issue of the journal allows us to present an overview of the current methodology, along with statements about why we made changes in research tasks and outcome expectations. We hope that other practitioners will find this article a convenient introduction to the methodology and how it can be applied to the valuation of library services. We are grateful to the Public Library Association for the initial small grant that helped us start this study and to the Institute of Museum and Library Services for two grants that have sustained our research.

Rationale for CBA study of public libraries CBA is a methodology by which economists calculate the value to the public of the services that an agency or organization delivers to its constituents. Economists have developed CBA over many decades and applied it to many different activities including those as variant as estimating the devastation caused by the Valdez oil spill and the benefits a community receives from a new swimming pool. The St. Louis team has applied CBA to libraries to estimate a dollar value of their services against an institution’s annual income and as a return on invested capital. After completion of a CBA study, library spokespersons can state in a brief sound bite that for every $1 of public funds, this library system is returning $2.00 (or $5.00 or $8.00) to its direct users. The spokespersons also can 154

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say that the rate of return on invested capital is 3 per cent (or 10 per cent or 25 per cent). Used in this way, CBA provides institutional leaders with a convenient and succinct communications tool. CBA methodology also allows dollar estimates of value derived from particular services. A study, for example, may show that 35 per cent of institutional value to constituents is derived from patron use of its materials collections although only 20 per cent of all income is spent on that category. The library management team then can decide if they can increase net benefits to the public by reallocating library resources or budget support from one service to another. At the inception of the project in 1994, the team made the decision to use CBA rather than economic impact analysis. Economic impact methodology measures the change in regional economic activity derived from new factories that manufacture products for sale outside of the region or from expenditures by tourists who travel to the region. Hardly any libraries perform similar functions. Instead, libraries operate to benefit local and regional residents, not to attract new jobs and spending. CBA, which estimates the dollar value that local residents place on library services, therefore does a better job of analyzing the benefits from library operations than does economic impact analysis. The desired outcome of this project always has been the same: the development of a conservative, transportable and relatively affordable methodology that can be used in library systems of many different sizes with variant demographics, economics and racial circumstances. The principal cost in our CBA study is interviews with user-cardholders. The current phase of the project, which we call CBA II, is to design and demonstrate a methodology that requires fewer and shorter interviews. Hence, it is less expensive than CBA I. There is further information on project expenses later in this article. The current research task is to find out if the methodology used in CBA I, with some modifications, is as applicable to mid-size and smaller libraries (down to 50,000 cardholders) as it was to the larger libraries examined in the first study. The methodology previously

demonstrated its replicability in a re-analysis of the St. Louis library operations that produced benefits for general users similar to the St. Louis pilot study. Across the five libraries in CBA I, the methodology demonstrated sensitivity through its ability to detect substantial differences in valuation among libraries based not only on service consumption, but also on constituent demographics and their ability to pay (Holt et al., 2000). CBA I involved five systems: Baltimore County, MD; Birmingham, AL; King County [Seattle] WA; Phoenix, AZ; and a methodological re-test in St. Louis, MO. CBA II involves nine systems in three states. These are Pasadena, Bay City and Montgomery County, all within the Houston, TX, metropolitan area; Joliet, Skokie and Schaumburg, all within the Chicago, IL, metropolitan area; and Everett, Pierce County, and Mid-Columbia, all within the Seattle, WA, metropolitan area. In addition, one library in the Lewis and Clark Regional Library System [Granite City], immediately across the Mississippi river from St. Louis, is serving as a test bed for refining the methodology at the beginning of CBA II. The systems were chosen for their great variety in budgets, services and populations served. In addition, all were chosen because of their proximity to a major metropolitan airport, thereby limiting project travel costs.

Research steps in CBA II The research steps for CBA II are summarized as follows: . Develop service/user matrices. Within the constraints of their institutional mission statements, staff teams from the individual libraries work with the researchers to categorize their library services and users into a service/user matrix. This matrix makes explicit the relationships among major classes of users like households and educators, and services, like reference, adult materials and networked computers. Each intersecting cell represents a stream of benefits from a library service delivered to a particular class of customer. In user surveys or interviews that follow, customers will be

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.

.

asked how much of which services they use. These counts will translate into benefits that customers receive directly. In CBA II, the research team is expanding its investigation of electronic and computer services offered by participating libraries. Consolidate matrices. Project staff have worked with staff from all partner library systems to consolidate the matrices from the nine libraries into a common framework. Staff from each of the libraries have critiqued the common framework to ensure its applicability to each of the individual libraries. Decide which CBA methods will be used. Benefits can be classified as direct or indirect, individual or collective. As in CBA I, hard-to-measure library functions, like the library’s contribution to community literacy, are ignored. Any increase in their number would drive up the costs of each research survey and could undermine the credibility of the study. Prior experience in CBA I has demonstrated that the value of direct library services in a community is typically more than sufficient to demonstrate system value. Counting only direct benefits reinforces the assertion that the study’s estimates are conservative.

Measuring direct benefits To measure direct benefits, the project uses two different CBA ‘‘contingent valuation’’ techniques to estimate direct benefits to library users. The first is a service-by-service approach using the economist’s tool ‘‘consumer surplus’’. This tool measures the value that library users place on separately valued library services in excess of what they must pay to get such services. A typical set of consumer surplus survey questions might go as follows: ‘‘how many children’s books do you check out of your library each month?’’ The respondent then answers. ‘‘If your library didn’t exist, how many more books would you buy?’’ The respondent then answers. With several statistical adjustments, the researchers can estimate the dollar value that the consumer places on books borrowed from the library. That figure would

yield a consumer surplus figure for one service for one patron. The same set of questions is used for other services. Calculated together, the total becomes the consumer surplus, first, for each user, next, for all users surveyed, and, then, for the totality of a library’s direct users across the library’s primary services. The second approach measures the value of the library as a whole through users’ ‘‘willingness to pay’’ (WTP). In CBA I, WTP produced the most conservative estimates of value and had a consistently small refusal rate (i.e. most users were willing to answer the question). As in the large-library study, the CBA II study will ask library patrons how much they would be willing to pay rather than forego library usage or, if their local libraries were closed indefinitely due to a natural disaster, how much they would be willing to pay (in taxes) to restore and maintain the library privileges they have today. A few ‘‘must haves’’ in the process include: (1) Design survey instruments and develop interviewing software. Relying on the experiences of CBA I, the project team has redesigned the survey instrument and is developing interviewing software. (2) Price library services. In order to complete the study, the researchers have to price alternatives to library service. Finding private-sector prices for services that libraries deliver takes considerable time. Our tentative pricing for CBA II has involved calls to contract research firms, calculations based on the Bowker annual and other library publications, and inquiries to bookstores, movie theaters, children’s museums, etc. The researchers have consistently used conservative figures in the pricing of all alternatives to library services. (3) Select samples of users. Names and addresses of 2,500 households in each of the nine systems will be drawn from the cardholder database, limiting that sample only to those who have used their cards within the past year. The sample is drawn as close in time to the survey as possible in order to lose fewer persons by movement and changes in telephone number. The more up-to-date and accurate the database, the more likely that the completion rate of

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interviews will be sufficiently high to achieve statistical validity. (4) Ensure compliance with human subject guidelines. All research will be conducted in conformity with Federal guidelines for human subject research as applied by the Human Subjects Research Committee at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. The research will comply with all appropriate state laws protecting the privacy of library transactions and the highest standards for user privacy articulated in the principles documents of the American Library Association. (5) Complete 4,500 telephone surveys, 500 for each test site library. This process has several steps. First, computer services staff at each of the nine sites will draw a random sample of 2,500 cardholders who have used their cards within the last 12 months. A sample of at least 500 completed interviews will allow the extrapolation of sample statistical results to estimate the benefits to all cardholders from the tax investment of each public library. (6) Develop and implement techniques to hold down costs. Obviously, CBA methodology will not be used very much if its expense is too great. One project objective is to reduce costs. The research team is attempting several different strategies to reduce the costs of completing a CBA study: . Savings can be accomplished by reducing the number of services about which patrons are questioned. CBA 1 demonstrated that most patrons found ‘‘books for adults’’ or ‘‘books for children’’ far more valuable than ‘‘using encyclopedias, atlases and other similar general reference books.’’ Rather than creating a full compendium of services, the researchers have focused on those attributes that consistently furnished major benefits in the study of larger libraries. . Reducing costs can be accomplished by reducing the number of CBA estimates used. In CBA II, the researchers will focus only on willingness-to-pay and consumer surplus approaches. The team has eliminated the willingness-

to-accept and value of time methods of measuring benefits used in CBA I. Both strategies A and B reduce the length of each interview and the cost per completed survey. Reducing the length of each interview is also expected to have a favorable impact on response rates. (7) Reduce the number of user groups by querying only general users (households) and possibly teachers. CBA I demonstrated that other user groups (like senior centers and daycare) were insufficient in the total number surveyed to allow reliable statistical inference. Other user groups important to large urban libraries, such as businesses, play a much bigger role in the mission of smaller and mid-sized libraries. Restricting the sampling and surveys to only one user group rather than three cuts the survey expense to a third of the costs of the survey design used in CBA I. (8) Software developed. Develop computer software that embeds the survey instrument and performs most statistical calculations in a CBA study, thereby reducing the consulting and surveying costs to individual libraries. Experiment with a combined personal interview and web-based survey format in some test site libraries that, if successful, will reduce costs greatly and increase response rates. (9) Research each library’s operating expenditures and capital assets. In cost-benefit analysis, benefits that the public receives from a government agency or activity are compared with its costs. To measure costs, a library has to calculate its complete annual operating expenditures and value its physical capital assets. The latter will be valued at replacement cost excluding depreciation. (10) Measure direct benefits from annual income. In CBA I, annual local taxes spent for library operations yield substantial direct benefits. Each library returned more than $1 of benefits for each $1 of annual taxes. Baltimore County Public Library returned more than $3 in benefits per tax dollar. Birmingham Public Library returned at least $1.30 in benefits per tax dollar. King County Library System returned almost $5

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in benefits per tax dollar. Phoenix Public Library returned over $10 in benefits per tax dollar. SLPL returned more than $2.50 in benefits per tax dollar. The research team will calculate the same benefits ratios for all the libraries in CBA II. (11) Measure return on invested capital. Each library studied in CBA I yielded a good annual return on invested capital. Baltimore County Public Library returned a minimum of 72 per cent. Birmingham Public Library returned a minimum of 5 per cent. King County Library System returned a minimum of 94 per cent. Phoenix Public Library returned over 150 per cent. SLPL returned a minimum of 22 per cent. (12) Conduct statistical tests for reliability. In CBA I all results were subjected to standard statistical tests for reliability, and the study proved to be reasonably valid and reliable. The research team expects CBA II results to be statistically valid and reliable. (13) Report results to the participating libraries. Assist them in interpreting the results and communicating those results to internal and external constituencies. Of course, the methodology will be evaluated, not only by the project team but by staff from all the libraries participating in the project. After evaluation, the methodology will be disseminated. The dissemination will include a training model for the use of individual systems and publications for the general library population.

Final thoughts The applicability of the proposed methodology to other educational and cultural institutions is an open question. The central building blocks of the methodology all appear to be applicable to other publicly supported institutions, such as museums or performance arts organizations. The use of a matrix to display mission as an array of services versus subgroups of users is appropriate to a variety of public service venues. Contingent valuation as a means of estimating benefits is also widely applicable. The use of consumer surplus is more problematic, as there may not be readily available market substitutes for services of some public institutions. Return on taxpayer support and return on invested capital are easily applied to almost any publicly supported institution. Nevertheless, the project’s first purpose is to refine and demonstrate the methodology in the context of mid-size and smaller libraries. The methodology may be extended at a later date to serve other institutions, including museums and historical societies.

References Holt, G., Elliot, D. and Dussold, C. (1996), ‘‘A framework for evaluating public investment in urban libraries’’, The Bottom Line: Managing Libraries Finances, Vol. 9 No. 4, pp. 4-13. Holt, G., Elliot, D., Watts, A. and Holt, L.E. (2000), Libraries Are Valuable: Prove it!, St. Louis Public Library, St. Louis, MO.

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Valuing your public library: the experience of the Barrie Public Library, Ontario, Canada Adele Kostiak

The author Adele Kostiak is Chief Executive Officer, Brampton Public Library, Brampton, Ontario, Canada. Keywords Consumer attitudes, Value, Value analysis, Libraries, Public libraries Abstract The Barrie Public Library undertook a study to document its social and economic contributions to the local community. We used The Library’s Contribution to Your Community – a manual developed by Southern Ontario Library Service. This article describes our experience with the manual, why and how we did the study, our key findings and the results of the work. Electronic access The research register for this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregisters The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0888-045X.htm

Introduction The City of Barrie, Ontario, Canada, is situated approximately 50 miles north of Toronto and is one of the fastest growing municipalities in the province of Ontario, with an annual growth rate of some 5,000. The public library serves the population of 100,000 from one new (1996) service location in the downtown area. With a collection of almost 200,000 items, a library staff of 33.34 FTE, the library circulates 1.2 million items per year. It should be noted that the library board and the community supported a one million dollar capital campaign to build the 42,500 square foot facility for the growing community. The ongoing local support for the library and its services amounts to $20.00 per capita. The board and senior management of the Barrie Public Library determined the need to quantitatively and qualitatively assess the value of the library to the development of the community. The library strategic plan had been in place for some ten years and required verification and confirmation as time for renewal drew near. The demands of the growing community and the strains on the tax-funded institutions meant that the library was competing for a growing, but finite, pot of money. The Library’s Contribution to Your Community: A Resource Manual for Libraries to Document their Social and Economic Contribution to their Local Community provides an outline for public libraries to compile, analyze and present data and information that substantiates its contribution to the well-being of the community in a way that is meaningful to funders and other stakeholders. The manual describes 21 benefit measures that libraries may choose to document to communicate their impact on their local communities. The benefit measures are divided into social benefits or economic benefits. The manual also outlines methodologies for measuring the benefits and provides tools to use in this process.

The study The Bottom Line: Managing Library Finances Volume 15 . Number 4 . 2002 . pp. 159–162 # MCB UP Limited . ISSN 0888-045X DOI 10.1108/08880450210450924

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Findings

The Barrie Public Library, chose to measure three categories: . information services to local business; . lifelong learning; . satisfaction with the community as a place to live. These benefit measures were chosen in keeping with the city’s emphasis on business development, the residential development and the prominence of the community college. All of the measures chosen verified components of the library strategic plan and set the stage for the new strategic planning process. The selected target groups for the final report were the business community, funders (both municipal and individual), and new arrivals to the community. The Barrie Public Library undertook the study to emphasize quantitatively the value of the library to the selected, target groups; to verify staff and board perceptions of the use of the library by the community with hard data; to attempt to put a dollar value on the services including cost avoidance; to build relations with the city, the business community and recent arrivals to the community; and finally, to provide local data for the launch of the library planned giving program. The findings were accumulated using the following information-gathering techniques: . A staff deployment study that had been conducted a year earlier, which provided information on the amount and cost of staff time for the various services provided at the library. . The integrated library system provided a sampling for specific collections and their use. . Four focus groups from the targeted populations were gathered to assess their satisfaction with the library and its services. . Key informant interviews provided detailed information on the value of the library to representatives from the targeted groups. . Surveys of users and a special survey of the business community completed the information-gathering process.

The next step was to identify the key learnings from all sources, summarize the findings and gather impact statements. The following are the major findings for each of the benefits chosen. Information service to local business The major findings for information service to local business are: . library holdings on business practices and plans = 5,616 titles; . circulation of material about business = 19,475 titles per year; . average retail price of titles = $26.41 per unit; . value of volumes circulated = $614,000 per year; . cost avoidance factor $72,000 (based on a ten title sample); . attributed $10,000 of value for Internet training (based on 216 hours at consultant rate of $50 per hour). Focus groups provided local testimonials and impact statements. Example: ‘‘Without a good library in the community a lot of us who run businesses from our home would be sunk.’’ (There are 4,500 home-based businesses in Barrie of which 63 per cent use the library for their work.) Lifelong learning The major findings for lifelong learning are: . a total of 56 per cent of survey respondents use the library for this purpose; . the value of staff assistance, at commercial rates = $282,150; . circulation of self-improvement titles = 26,405 per year; . circulation of how-to titles = 150,704 per year. Personal testimonials of value in this area were most sincere and touching. Example: ‘‘My sister attempted suicide twice. I read a lot about depression, which helped me to know how to help her. I couldn’t have done that without the library . . . I also joined an association that provides support for people like me. The library was the link to the association.’’

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Adele Kostiak

Satisfaction with the community as a place to live The major findings for satisfaction with the community as a place to live are: . A total of 71 per cent ranked the library as important or very important; . A total of 51 per cent visit the library once a week, 30 per cent once every 2-3 weeks; . A total of 48 per cent reported getting information about the community and events from the library. Example: ‘‘My community is the people I know through activities like sports and the library’s children’s programs. I think I know only three people in my so called neighbourhood.’’

Methods The methods used to obtain the information needed to value the library contribution were for the most part available in-house through regular data collection systems both manual and automated. The implementation of the user survey and the special business survey required some added attention by staff for data input. The staff deployment study was conducted prior to the use of the manual, but the information was vital to assigning dollar figures to services provided. This was especially relevant to the business community and the municipal funders. The focus group of users and business provided an excellent means of gathering first hand testimonials and positioning the library among non-users. Finally, the key informant interviews offered a one-on-one method of obtaining feedback from key individuals in the community and fostering a new image of the library. The last two methods were a fairly easy and effective means of obtaining information from non-users of the library. However, these information techniques require the services of a third party that will provide an open process for sharing information.

Our manual The manual affords each library the opportunity to select the level of effort that will

be used in valuing its services. Level 1 is simply a descriptor of the benefit based on literature supported by existing information from the library database. Level 2 introduces some easy information-gathering techniques, such as key informant interviews and focus groups. Levels 3 and 4 introduce surveying and level 5 entails primary research and longitudinal studies. In the case of Barrie Public Library, it was determined that a mixture of levels 2, 3 and 4 would be used to achieve the desired information to reach the target groups. Therefore, for the benefit to the business community, we used level 4 effort that included the information from the staff deployment study and a specific survey of the target group. With the benefit related to satisfaction with the community, an in-house survey of users was sufficient.

Outcomes The final report and results were shared with participants as well as the targeted groups. The communication and use of the results had a significant impact on the library. Just prior to the municipal budget process the report was provided to municipal funders. As a result of The Library’s Contribution to Your Community, the library realized a 23 per cent increase in its operating budget (approximately $370,000); commenced expanded partnerships with the business community; established a new relationship with the municipal economic development department; hired a business librarian; incorporated collection development information into collection development guidelines; acted as a partnership with the local community college; provided local statistical data for budget presentation; provided useable data for marketing plan; provided testimonials for launch of planned giving program. An outcome of the study that we did not foresee was its value as a management tool for future development of the library. It did confirm the targets of the existing strategic plan but laid the basis for the development of a new plan. It was used in the development of the collection development guidelines for the library. The local data from the contribution study was vital

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to the development and revision of the library marketing plan. Finally, the local information, especially the testimonials, was instrumental in the successful launch of the library planned giving program and its immediate positive response within the community. In the future, the library will be able to benchmark the benefits already studied to see developments locally and to meet needed changes. It was difficult to put a dollar value on services and staff, but this information is vital to emphasizing the value of the library to an identified user group. Other statistical data was easily available, but frequently not communicated effectively to the targeted audience. The information obtained at the local level can be used in a variety of capacities from budget presentations to planned giving campaigns. The library discovered that there was no means in place to capture true testimonials of the library value on an ongoing basis unlike statistical gathering related to circulation and reference service. Finally, The Library’s Contribution to Your Community manual provides a unique readymade tool for libraries of all size to use in valuing their services and communicating effectively with funders and the community at large. Public

libraries need to speak the language of their varied target audiences in explaining their benefit for one and all. The manual provides a way and means of doing just that.

For further information Southern Ontario Library Service developed The Library’s Contribution to Your Community on behalf of libraries in Ontario. The manual is now available for other libraries at $200 per copy. To order copies, contact Laurey Gillies, CEO, SOLS at 416-961-1669 ext. 5118 or [email protected]. Website: www.library.on.ca A detailed training course has recently been designed to complement the manual. The training course has been delivered to library organizations in a number of jurisdictions including Ontario, Michigan, Alaska, and Nova Scotia. The trainer is Jim Morgenstern of dmA Planning and Management Services who is also the principal author of the manual. For further information on the training program contact Jim Morgenstern, principal, dmA at 905-2754458 ext. 26 or [email protected]. Website: www.dmaconsulting.com.

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Introduction

Private funding for capital projects

Librarians have come to a realization over the past few years: it is essential to have private funding to augment public resources for major projects. All parties have begun to realize that private funding is essential to complete basic funding needs and to enable the library to seek an additional level of excellence often not possible with public funds. Around the country, public entities and corporations are forming public/private partnerships to undertake municipal projects. Libraries can be full participants in this trend.

Donna D. Nicely

Advantages of private funding in capital projects

The author Donna D. Nicely is Director, Nashville Public Library, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Keywords Libraries, Funding, Capital projects, Private sector, Construction management, Fund-raising Abstract Over the past few years, librarians have come to the realization that it is essential to have private funding to augment public resources for major capital projects. Use of private and public funds can have beneficial effects for the library. The funds can be used in a variety of ways to enhance the project and to help provide for future library programs and services. Electronic access The research register for this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregisters The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0888-045X.htm

The Bottom Line: Managing Library Finances Volume 15 . Number 4 . 2002 . pp. 163–166 # MCB UP Limited . ISSN 0888-045X DOI 10.1108/08880450210450933

Nashville Public Library in Tennessee has just completed a major building initiative that included the construction and equipping of a new main library and five new branches. Capital bonds issued by the city fully financed the four-year undertaking. When it became clear that new libraries were on the city’s funding agenda, library supporters were determined to establish the main library as the finest new civic building in the city. The group created a foundation to support the mission of Nashville Public Library and set out to raise additional funds to enhance the library (more details of the library and the foundation are available in the appendix). Fundraising at this level for the library had never been attempted. Results were remarkable: early gifts included five $1 million donations. Subsequent requests resulted in the foundation’s amassing over $10 million in assets. This innovative effort had several unanticipated benefits: . Public funding agencies like the idea that private donors are willing to support a major library building initiative. Not only do mayors and council representatives appreciate the extra dollars, the status of the library project increases in their eyes. Elected officials understand that when community members are willing to contribute directly to a civic project, they fully support the commitment. . People who contribute money to the project have a keen interest in its successful outcome.

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It is advantageous for the library to have powerful contributors concerned with its welfare. Often these contributors are active in the political and business realms in the city. The importance of having wellconnected advocates speak for the library cannot be over-stated. The visibility of the library in the community is increased in new ways. With private money in the project, the library can include items that otherwise might have been eschewed. For example, enhanced architectural design elements, more comfortable auditorium seating, a specially commissioned ceiling mural are all items that might not be acceptable if purchased with public money. Often these are the very elements to which the public responds most enthusiastically, but which they would judge to be a ‘‘frill’’ if included with tax dollars. Use of the private money lessens the possibility of criticism for similar aesthetic decisions. In addition, the donors have the honor of being associated with the notable element contributed by them for the enjoyment of the community.

Urgency of the request The focus that capital projects provide is an effective means by which to begin private funding initiatives for the library, or to reinvigorate existing supporters. The specificity of the project is an advantage. People understand that there is a timeline. If they want to participate, they must do so by a particular time. The library will only be built once. This lends urgency to the cause, which is helpful in fundraising. If a donor wants to have a room named after his/her family, the gift must be received by a certain time as determined by the construction process. Decisions must be made in a timely manner or the gift opportunity will be lost. In addition, the capital project can also be a means to garner funds for related programs and services that are tied to the opening of the new library. For example, a woman stepped forward to give a generous donation for a new branch

library on behalf of her husband’s family. The donation was to endow children’s programs in the branch. While the donation was not strictly for the capital project, its timing was connected to the opening of the new building. The woman wanted her gift to be announced as part of the opening festivities. The urgency factor was at work here and it was beneficial to the library.

How private funds can be used In addition to funding basic requirements of a construction project, private funding in capital projects can be used in a variety of ways: . To provide enhancements. One of the areas that people love most in the new Nashville Library is the courtyard garden (see Plate 1). The garden has a beautiful fountain, stone benches, cafe´ tables, and lush plantings. It has become a favorite place for Nashvillians to eat lunch, and is considered to be one of the signature spaces in the library. The courtyard garden was made possible through a generous donation which funded the enhancements. While the architectural design called for a courtyard, it would not have been so splendid. This is a clear example of how the private gift affected the very perception of the public about the success of its new library. . To establish a fund for maintenance of particular areas. Using the example of the gift for the courtyard garden in Nashville, half of

Plate 1 The courtyard of the main Nashville Public Library

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the million-dollar gift was invested to create an ongoing maintenance fund. We feel thankful each time we observe the special gardeners making their frequent visits to prune the trees and plant the flowers. The fund will make it possible to tend the courtyard garden in perpetuity. This approach was also used in the other major named areas in the main library, including the conference center and the grand reading room. Half of the original gift was invested so that the conference rooms, auditorium, and gallery can be kept fresh and appealing for users over the years. The unique fixtures in the grand reading room will be maintained for future generations of users. To establish funds for particular services or programs. Sometimes a donor wishes to name a space that needs no specific enhancements or special maintenance fund. In this case, the gift can be used for other purposes, such as purchase of materials, or the establishment of a yearly stipend to fund children’s programs. A major donor who chose to name the entry hall of the library specified that her gift be used to purchase new materials for the collections. To build endowment. The capital project also has the potential to bring in gifts for endowment. These funds are invested with an eye to the future needs of the library. The donors can be encouraged to make their gift within the timeframe of the capital project. In this way, they respond to the urgency of the request and can receive full recognition when the library opens. Responding to the excitement of the new main library project in Nashville, a donor provided a million dollar gift to initiate the endowment fund.

Timing and method In order to make full use of major capital donations, it is best to receive them early in the project’s planning stages. Referring to the example of Nashville’s courtyard garden once again, the gift was pledged early enough so that it could be worked into the essential structure of

the building. Inclusion of a hand-worked, mosaic fountain on an existing second floor structure took months of detailed planning. There would have been no feasible way to add the fountain into the architectural drawings after they had been formulated. Knowledge adds pressure to the timeline on a project. It is essential that the solicitation of gifts begin early enough in order to meet unmovable deadlines. Even with excellent planning there will be gifts made that are too late to be incorporated into the structure of the building. The gifts are accepted graciously of course. It is important to communicate clearly with the donor, because, unless he is experienced in the process of construction, he may feel that the design of the building can be altered. What are his expectations? Is there another way to recognize his generosity? Nashville Public Library received a large donation to fund an important special collection after building construction had begun. It was too late to provide a special display area and storage rooms. The special collection was accommodated, and support rooms were reassigned. Redesign of the area is under consideration. A major public capital project is a cumbersome undertaking, comprised of numerous regulations, and levels of control. Applying private funds to a public project adds another layer of complication. It takes much time and planning to insure that the various streams of financing flow together smoothly. It is a mistake to think that accepting private money for the capital project will be simple. It may be necessary for the governing council to accept the donation, a process which could take months. How exactly will the money be transferred from the foundation to the financial authority of the project? How long will it take? Upon whose authority is the transfer approved? What kind of documentation will be needed? Will it be necessary for the library foundation to commit to a particular amount of funding for the project before the money is actually in hand? These are tricky issues that require time to work through with all parties. Private funding contributes immeasurably to library capital projects. Along with needed dollars, efforts to gain new friends and interest donors in the activities of the library have longlasting benefits. At the moment that you and

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the foundation members feel the project will become reality, it is time to seek donors to assist. It is time to think creatively about how the generous support can be put to best use for your library, now and in the future.

Further reading Albanese, A.R. (2002), ‘‘Foundations for the future’’, Library Journal, Vol. 127 No. 8, pp. 40-3. Krull, J.R. (1991), ‘‘Private dollars for public libraries’’, Library Journal, Vol. 116 No. 1, pp. 65-8. Panas, J. (1999), Finders Keepers: Lessons I’ve Learned about Dynamic Fundraising, Bonus Books, Chicago, IL.

Appendix (1) Nashville Public Library facts: . 20 branches, main library. . 569,891 service area population. (2) Main library: . Opened: 9 June 2001. . Construction: – public funding $50 million; and – private funding $2 million. (3) Nashville Public Library Foundation: . Founded: 1997. . Assets: $10 million. . Executive Director: Susan Dyer.

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Introduction

Plain English collection budgets: a collection plan for public libraries

In 1995, the public library of Des Moines (PLDM) faced a crisis. The materials collections suffered from years of neglect. The library materials budget of $275,000 had not been increased for nearly a decade. Weeding had been ignored, budgets were woefully under funded, and there was no specific collection plan. The library had no clear direction in mind other than the certainty that more money was needed and that it was not providing the materials customers wanted. Waiting lists for new materials were very long, and browsers were not finding the specific books and media they wanted on the shelves. So, as part of a strategic planning process, the library decided to establish a plan that would bring its circulating collections up to standards.

Lorna Truck

The author Lorna Truck is Deputy Director, Public Library of Des Moines, Des Moines, Iowa, USA. Keywords

What were the standards?

Public libraries, Collection management Abstract The public library of Des Moines has addressed problems of a neglected materials collection and inadequate materials budget through a new and innovative collection plan based on quantifiable local standards. The library measures median collection age, and shelf availability of recently circulated items. The collection plan is based on a standard size determined for each library collection. Items added each year equal the number of items withdrawn. Collection budgets are calculated using formulas that will provide a five-year median age and at least 50 per cent availability in all types of materials. The library has succeeded in reducing the median age from 16 to eight years and has achieved 50 per cent availability in almost all collection areas. Electronic access The research register for this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregisters The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0888-045X.htm

The Bottom Line: Managing Library Finances Volume 15 . Number 4 . 2002 . pp. 167–173 # MCB UP Limited . ISSN 0888-045X DOI 10.1108/08880450210450942

The PLDM (www.desmoineslibrary.com) is located in the capital city of Iowa serving a population of 200,000. Library funding per capita in Des Moines was lower than that of other urban libraries in the state. However, the collection size was above average compared with other libraries of similar size throughout the country. The collection was not good, but how could we prove it, and how could we compare ourselves to other excellent collections? Where were the benchmarks and the national standards? Finding none, we decided to develop our own standards. As part of a system-wide strategic planning process, the library began to examine the problems of our collection in detail; attempting to establish benchmarks for measurement, and goals for excellence for the materials collection. During this planning time, I was introduced to the collection development theories of Roy Kenagy, consultant with the State Library of Iowa through his Advanced Collections Workshop Series in 1996. Kenagy’s theories included six very concise collection development basics: (1) A collection does not need to grow indefinitely to meet the needs of library customers.

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(2) A total of 20 per cent of the collection will account for 80 per cent of the circulation. (3) Customers will tell you what materials they want if you study what they check out. (4) A collection’s vitality is the best measure of its effectiveness. (Vitality is a measure of the portion of the collection that is actually used.) (5) A materials budget can be easily calculated using collection size and desired collection age. (6) Simple collection goals based on inventory theory will allow a library to articulate its budget needs clearly. These ideas arrived at a fortuitous time for PLDM. We were delighted to experiment with new concepts while developing a new collection plan for Des Moines. The revitalized PLDM collection would be reached by following these steps: . Choose collection sizes for each library branch and each material type. . Stick to the size goal, weed until the size was reached, and continue to weed as new materials are added to keep a constant size. . Choose a median collection age: ours was five years. This means that at least half of the collection will be newer than five years of age. (Five years was chosen as our standard because it was a stretch for us to reach toward. In addition, the five-year standard made calculations very easy: 10 per cent of the collection would be replaced each year.) . Calculate the budget needed to reach the collection goals (size and age), based on the average cost per item in a material type. The collection plan can be simply stated by two goals: (1) The collection of the PLDM will consist of 500,000 items with a median age of five years. (2) Readers will have at least a 50 per cent chance of finding the item they wish to check out when they come to the library. To reach a median age of five years in 1995, the library needed a materials budget of $650,000. In future years the target budget increased annually by the inflation rate of the average cost per item purchased by the library. The per item

cost for PLDM in fiscal year 2001 was $18.00 and the target materials budget had increased to $900,000. PLDM was unable to find benchmarks for collection age, or standards for ideal collection sizes. Most standards seemed to be minimum collection sizes rather than ideal sizes. PLDM chose 500,000 items, based on the basic collections our buildings were originally built to house. The library chose a median age of five years because it sounded reasonable, and it was an easy figure to use to calculate budget figures in our heads. A total of 10 per cent of the collection needs to be replaced every year to maintain a collection with a median age of five years. In 1995, we did not know the median age of our collection.

Why median rather than average age? A public library collection that serves as a research or resource collection as well as a popular materials library needs to contain certain classic titles and local history references. Measuring by median age rather than average age means that older important titles that are retained in the collection will not influence or drag down the overall age measurement of the collection. In recent years, PLDM has adjusted the definition of median age of an item by using the add date rather than the copyright date. Thus, classic titles that are heavily used and replaced frequently are considered to be new items when they are added (the median ages of the PLDM collection for 1996 and 2002 are shown in Figure 1).

Benchmarks After the basic plan was developed, PLDM began collecting benchmark measurements. In 1996, the library computer system did not allow easy calculation of the age of the collection. So we undertook an extensive survey of the collection, sampling every nth bibliographic record in the system and recording the date of the item. Enough records were collected to get a sample of 1,000 copyright dates. The median collection age was determined to be 16 years.

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Figure 1 Public library of Des Moines: collection age

The newest branch had a median age of six years and the Iowa history collection was the oldest, with a median age of 32 years.

Calculating the required budget The final step was to calculate the budget that would be required to achieve the PLDM collection goals. Based on the requirements of a collection of 500,000 items and a median age of five years, this calculation was quite simple. All that was needed was the average cost of an item added to the collection. Fortunately, the library Dynix computer system provided that information. Once the collection was weeded to the target size of 500,000, maintaining the collection with a median age of five years necessitated replacing 10 per cent of the collection each year. A total of 10 per cent of 500,000 is 50,000. Therefore, the ideal budget is computed by multiplying 50,000 (10 per cent of 500,000) times the average cost of an item. The required budget for PLDM was $650,000 because at that time, the average cost per item purchased was $13.00. If PLDM weeded to reach the ideal collection size, if it

then received a budget equal to 50,000 times the average purchase price of one item, and if it continued to weed as many items as it added, it could reach the goal of a median age of five years within five years. Additional funds over and above the target budget, would allow the library to reach its goal sooner. The ideal budget formula is: (collection size)  (replacement rate)  (average cost of items) = required budget, i.e. 500,000  10 per cent  $13.00 = $650,000 (see also Table I for a simple budget spreadsheet). Before PLDM began to implement this plan, the total collection numbered 585,000 items; it was 17 per cent above the target size. The library implemented a weeding program immediately to try to reach the target size for each library branch. Weeding lists were generated from our library management system based on last use date. Books not used in branches within the last two years were pulled from the shelves and examined by librarians. The Central Library began by weeding books not used within five years, and then examined items not used within three years. Last use dates of one year and even six months were used to weed the branch media collections, and the

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Table I Proportional budget based on collection size Collection Central East Side Forest Franklin North South

Target volumes

Repl. rate

Vols per year

Cost per vol.

Demand budget

Adj. dem. budget

Actual Expen.

180,000 60,000 40,000 105,000 50,000 65,000 500,000

0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1

18,000 6,000 4,000 10,500 5,000 6,500 50,000

$12.14 $12.14 $12.14 $12.14 $12.14 $12.14 $12.14

$218,520 $72,840 $48,560 $127,470 $60,700 $78,910 $607,000

$152,524 $50,841 $33,894 $88,972 $42,368 $55,078 $423,677

$141,201 $51,934 $33,717 $98,848 $48,680 $49,297 $423,677

Difference ($11,323) $1,093 ($177) $9,876 $6,312 ($5,781)

Notes: Resource goals: Target volumes 500,000; Actual budget $423,677; Required budget $607,000; Required/actual budget ratio 0.69798517; Budget shortfall $183,323

Central Library videos were weeded if not used in one year. The weeding tasks required a large commitment of staff time and energy, but weeding did not require an increased materials budget. Beginning the collection plan implementation with weeding allowed PLDM to begin to make progress toward its goals without first securing additional funds to improve the collections.

Proportional budgets for departmental collections We next developed the plan in some detail, outlining sizes for each branch and each media type and calculating the budget necessary to reach the five-year collection age goal. A collection planning team comprised of branch managers, the deputy director, and the selection librarian, developed individual budgets for each department. The team chose individual collection sizes and target median ages for each branch and media type. The smaller branches of PLDM are considered popular reading libraries, so the median ages for those branches were set at three-and-a-half or four years. The team added circulation as a measure of demand and decreased the median target age for some of our small popular library collections. These adjustments increased the money dedicated to popular collections and provided a more substantial budget for our small branch locations. The library administration found it important to address branch managers’ concerns; that smaller collections would be neglected because

the circulation was lower in the small branches. If small branches were treated the same as the larger collections, lower circulation would trigger lower budgets, which in turn would increase the age of the collection and lower circulation and popularity of the library in a downward spiral. To counteract this problem, the smaller, less active branches were targeted as popular materials collections with a target median age of three to four years. The team found that some collections, especially high demand media and certain nonfiction topics required a newer collection than the target five-year median. Targeting certain high demand areas could have increased the overall target budget goal by reducing the overall target median age of the collection below five years. The team decided to stick with a system-wide median of five years by increasing the target median age in other less popular areas to compensate for the lower age of the high demand popular collections (see Table II). The next challenge was to convince the library board of the value of the new collection plan, so that the board could request the required funds from the city council. The beauty of this plan was that it was easy to explain to non-librarians. Most business people understand inventory and stock theory. Our collection is the stock required to provide service to our customers. We need to keep our inventory turning over and our stock current. The median age of the collection turned out to be an excellent selling point. Who wants to pick up a 16-year-old medical book from the shelf? The library board and city council could all think of personal examples of times when they

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Table II Franklin Ave. branch proportional demand budget Collection Adult fiction Adult non-fiction Picture books Juvenile Paperbacks Videotapes Audiotapes Compact discs Total collection

Circulation 117,020 81,555 60,398 45,166 20,493 33,149 38,457 18,949 415,187

Circ. prop.

Demand vols

Repl. rateb

Med. age years

Vols per year

Cost per vol.

Demand budget

Adj. dem. budget

0.28 0.20 0.15 0.11 0.05 0.08 0.09 0.05

29,594 20,625 15,275 11,422 5,183 8,383 9,726 4,792 105,000

0.1 0.1 0.083 0.1 0.125 0.143 0.143 0.125 0.11

5 5 6 5 4 3.5 3.5 4 4.5

2,959 2,063 1,268 1,142 648 1,199 1,391 599 11,268

$12.72 $12.71 $10.00 $10.62 $3.51 $23.00 $16.36 $12.20

$37,644 $26,215 $12,678 $12,131 $2,274 $27,573 $22,753 $7,308 $148,574

$25,045 $17,441 $8,435 $8,071 $1,513 $18,344 $15,138 $4,862 $98,848

Notes: aDemand budget is lower because the average replacement rate is below 0.1. bReplacement rate is highest for videotapes and books on tape. Resource goals: Target volumes 105,000; Actual budget $98,848; Required budgeta $148,574; Required/actual budget ratio 0.66530953; Budget shortfall $49,726

were unable to find current information to check out. In addition, the board and the council were relieved to hear that we did not expect the book collections to continue growing in size forever. The population of Des Moines has not increased significantly in several decades. We did not need to address the needs of anticipated future population growth in our service population. Board members understood the concept of an ideal size for the collection and the fact that too many items on the shelf sometimes make it difficult to find what you need. They understood that infrequently used items could probably be located via interlibrary loan. We also introduced them to the concept that more and more nonfiction sources would be available in electronic format in the future. (Since that time the library has developed plans to expand the Central Library and several branches.) The board’s presentation of the budget request to the city council in 1996 was clear and simple. . The median age of the PLDM collection is 16 years. . Our goal is to have a collection with a median age of five years. . The library has established a target collection size and does not have plans to grow in the near future. . PLDM must replace 50,000 items per year to maintain a five-year-old collection. . Therefore, the library needs $620,000 per year in the materials budget.

PLDM supplements the materials budget with funds from grants, gifts, and state contracts. With these added funds, PLDM is closer to the target budget, which is now $900,000 ($4.60 per capita). In fiscal year 2001, PLDM spent $706,092 on materials. In 2002, it spent $776,400. The materials budget has nearly tripled over a six-year period. However, the budget is still $123,000 short of the current target budget, so the median age of five years is still an elusive goal. The latest median age figure is eight years for the circulating collection as a whole. Interestingly, we have measured the age of the collection in use, that is, the collection of items checked out. The median age for this collection is three years. Data reinforces our assumption that newer materials are what our readers want to use.

Availability of popular materials The library board has also adopted a second major goal for our collection: the PLDM will have at least 50 per cent availability of the items our readers want to check out. We define popular or in-demand materials as the customer-selected collection in use; that is, all of the items checked out at a given time. PLDM measures availability by selecting a list or a sample of all the items checked out at a particular point in time. Before PLDM migrated to our current software, we manually selected a sample of items that were checked

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out. With the Dynix library management software now used by PLDM, it is easy to select and save a list of all items checked out at a given time. Then, six to eight weeks later, we examine the list to see how many of those items are available to be checked out. The percentage of items previously checked out that are now on the shelf is our measure of customer weighted availability. In the first study of the PLDM collection in 1995 and 1996, benchmarks were determined. The availability rate of the collection overall was above our goal at over 61 per cent, but highdemand collections were far less available. For example, adult mystery book availability was 41 per cent, audiobook availability was 40 per cent, and children’s picture book availability was 46 per cent. Topics and collections found to be less than 50 per cent available were targeted for special buying projects. Collections we have improved thus far are children’s readers and primers, picture books, health books, audiobooks on tape, audio compact discs, computer books, travel books, test guides, pet books, and various popular homework topics. Picture books were raised from 46 per cent to 56 per cent availability and mysteries from 41 per cent to 76 per cent availability. We have been unable to increase the availability of audiobooks despite our increased purchasing. The demand for this medium in our library seems to be insatiable. The library also has standing orders for new titles published by 494 popular authors. The number of copies ordered for each author is calculated using Kenagy’s duplication formula based on past use. When evaluating specific collections, the library also uses a measure called collection vitality to determine what portion of the collection accounts for the majority of circulation activity. A high level of collection vitality indicates that a large portion of the collection is used. A low vitality measure indicates that a small portion of the collection is used heavily. A collection with low vitality can generally be weeded down to a fraction of its former size without measurably affecting circulation. The library’s experience with duplication and vitality measures are excellent topics for future discussion.

Results The collection plan is six years old. Since we began in 1995/96, we have nearly tripled our materials budget, decreased our collection size by 15 per cent, reduced the waiting time for popular titles, and increased the availability of a number of popular collections. Circulation of materials has increased by 18 per cent.

Collection growth For libraries that are increasing the size of their collections, a layer of complexity is added to the collection plan. It is tempting to halt weeding until the target collection size is reached. To avoid decreasing median age, weeding needs to begin by the fifth year for a five-year-old collection, regardless of whether the target size has been reached. With this plan in place, it is easy to project the annual collection budget that will be required for a larger collection. PLDM is currently working on a decade-long facilities improvement project that will include a new Central Library, a new regional branch and expansions in our existing branches. Larger collections are planned for the expanded buildings. The existing PLDM collection plan has proved very helpful as the library projects the operating budget necessary for our new Central Library, slated to open in 2005. The target circulating collection size for the system will grow from 500,000 to 615,000 with the opening of the new building. In a few more years, PLDM collections will increase again with the doubling of one of our regional branch collections and the opening of a brand new regional branch. This plan provides elegant simplicity, while allowing for complexity in the detail of collection sub-funds for individual departmental collections. Under this plan, a budget can be entirely demand-driven or modified to provide additional funding for important, but less frequently used collections.

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Conclusions

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The benefits of this system for PLDM have been great: . We have developed a measurable collection plan. . We have benchmarks and measurements with which to help us toward our goals. . We have a plan that is easy to explain and sell to the city council.

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We have increased our materials budget significantly since our collection plan was adopted. We are all working together to reach our five-year-old collection goals. We hope to reach our target budget in the next year or two. After that, it will not be long before we reach our collection goals.

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Economics God – and the devil – are in the details Keywords Leadership, Libraries, Authority, Time, Employees, Libraries

In the secular world of library administration, there exists a whole range of opinions about a director’s need to master the details of organizational operation. On one hand, we all know the director who is like the winter cold: every place you go the director is there. Management of the mundane, no matter how trivial, is this director’s specialty. My best example: a decade or so ago, a secretary took me down a long hall for my meeting with the director whom I had not visited before. Instead of heading into an office, I found myself in a motor services bay with the director in the pit supervising while a mechanic changed the oil on a vehicle. On the other hand, there is the director who is above it all. Flying about from city to city and country to country to consult, give speeches and serve on this or that committee, this director limits personal organizational management to outlining policy. ‘‘Leadership’’ is this director’s mantra and expertise, and no seminar on this subject, no matter how distant, is too far away to deter the director from finding out more about this mystical art. My example: a library director who has a deputy sit next to him at board meetings, because he needs help with the names of board members. These two managerial extremes should remind us that in libraries, as in the leadership of other organizations, God – and the devil – are both in management details. Too much attention creates an organization that is incapable of managing itself at the lower levels without the word from on high. Too little attention usually results in irresolvable turf battles and a fearful lack of direction for the whole organization. In the mid-1960s, English historian W.L. Burn wrote a book on Victorian England which he titled The Age of Equipoise. In the title, Burn used the term as a noun, but it also is a verb that means to ‘‘counterpoise’’ or ‘‘to equal

or offset in weight’’. Intriguingly, Burn used the term to designate how the Victorians attempted to counterpoise their past, present and future. Like the mid-Victorians, library directors must counterpoise the leadership and the details of their management. Standing on the verge of change, a professional library director needs to sense important changes, to lead the institution by pointing out these changes and to have sufficient grasp of detail to work the change through the fabric of the organization. Counterpoising the past and the future is not easy, and directors need help doing it. In my library I achieve a counterpoise by what I regard as a process of ‘‘consensual management’’. Consensual management has three relatively simple steps. A professional director senses important shifts in all-affecting areas like customer service, the age revolution, and technology. Then, in consultation with staff, the director defines the mission-driven service problem that the change creates, lays out which parts of the organization will need to change, and then either has, or gains, a sufficient grasp of detail to weave the change through the fabric of the organization until it becomes engrained in the work culture. That shift in the daily or hourly method by which work is accomplished represents real change. If a director does not drive change into details of daily work, the supposed change is little more than a wellcontrived illusion. Developing consensual management for me is based on three principles. First, that I as the director have power and I will use it if I perceive the need, especially if some of my managers are locked in turf wars. Second, I depend on management staff to engage me in creative argument to ensure the best future for the institution. And, third, I depend on both formal and informal communications to obtain sufficient detail to make sure that our institutional decision-making is informed. In short, consensual managers have lots of room for healthy dissent and time to talk things through. There are many good paths to the future. The best way is found, almost always, when those most responsible for the organization have the opportunity to talk themselves into which is the ‘‘best’’ path on which their library should take its next steps. Nearly always, consensual management saves

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time because those organizational leaders who have to know to achieve success are wellinformed before a project starts. Consensual management should not be confused with the ‘‘teamwork trap’’ into which so many newly minted library directors fall. Directors in new positions, especially those who apprenticed under martinet directors, have a tendency to state, ‘‘I am a different kind of director. Under my watch, all of us will work as a team of equals.’’ This announcement makes all the staff bullies smile. They go back to their old behavior of protecting their own fiefdoms without worrying very much about any organizational detail except those that involve protection of turf. By starting from the ‘‘teamwork trap’’ premise, a new director has lost the leadershipmanagement war before the first administrative battle begins. To reiterate, when directors do not exercise the overt and/or latent power and authority of their office, the street-fighters on every library staff distribute the commodity unequally among themselves. Consensual management works best when God rather than the devil is in the details. To put the matter simply, a director unengaged with organizational detail is less a director than a symbolic figurehead. Directors do not need to know everything about the organization, and replacing oil in a van’s engine seems to me just as ineffective as a leadership style as above-it-all disengagement. Why this column in The Bottom Line? Because nothing is more expensive in any organization than staff time. And, the most expensive staff time is management time. If you need a rationale for thinking about the ideas in this column, take your salary schedule and a calculator into any of your management meetings. Then calculate the hourly cost of the meeting. Developing and following the management style that makes the best use of management time to move a library forward is a prime concern of any director. This is especially so when a director has been lucky enough to recruit and retain a coterie of managers who are highly qualified professionally and who take a real interest in how effective management can bring positive change to the institution. Consensual management is one way of making

lots of hard decision-making significant in the life of the organization and as much fun as decision-making ever can be. Finally, there is one set of details that is so important that a director cannot leave them to anyone else. That is the process by which a management team working with their unit heads agree on the specific work outcomes that will be used as the measurement of success. And, at the same time, it is important to articulate evaluation techniques and/or standards by which the work unit members and management know that the unit has succeeded in carrying out its mission. God is in the details when directors equipoise their time working on this level of detail, especially the specification of expected outcomes. The devil is in the details when directors forget the necessity to counterpoise the institution between the present and the future, between doing current work and making appropriate changes, between spending time on the petty and not spending enough time on defining behavior outcomes. The result of either deficiency almost always means confusion among staff from the top down. When staff is confused, operational expenses rise. Ultimately, therefore, library directors have to balance vision with detail and the desire to move an institution quickly with the need for consent for change from those have to make the change in their daily work lives. Glen Holt Executive Director of the St. Louis Public Library, St. Louis, MO, USA

Spotlight on financial issues The finance of public libraries is not always a bad picture Keywords Public finance, Library users, Public libraries, Library services

Like local news broadcasts that tend to develop a formula, news items about public

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library finances are usually quite predictable. They tend to be either budget-cut stories or good-news stories, that is, the generous gift stories, and although the idea of a free library supported by public funds is part of the American credo, the good-news articles are about the libraries with active fundraising plans or ‘‘good friends’’. There are, to be sure, the ‘‘not-so-bad-news articles’’; these announce a budget cut that is less severe than originally announced. This spring there were stories of all three types (bad news, not-so-bad news, and good news) about the New York Public Library. First it was reported that the New York City libraries were facing a 15 per cent budget cut (Oder, 2002a). Mayor Mike Bloomberg had presented a budget on 13 February that cut a total of $39 million from the libraries’ funding. He also proposed a 15 per cent cut for cultural institutions and 7 per cent for school budgets. The library systems – New York, Queens Borough, and Brooklyn – had already dealt with cuts of $16 million after 11 September and were planning for the new ones. This meant eliminating most Sunday hours and severely reducing the materials budgets. There was, to be sure, great concern among city council members, librarians, and library users. Many thought that this exceeded what was reasonable, and The New York Times published an editorial on 25 February demanding that the library cuts be limited to the level of the school budget cuts. In the past, mayor Rudy Giuliani’s cuts had been reversed by the city council, but this year the city is facing a $4.76 billion budget deficit, and even those agencies that escape unscathed on budget time, such as the police and fire departments, are facing cuts. In response to the proposed budget, in midMay librarians and residents testified before city council, emphasizing the drastic effect that the reduced funding would have on library services (American Library Association, 2002a). On 28 May, the Long Island Newsday reported that Queens Borough public library director Gary Strong, who was looking at a $10.5 million reduction in funding, pointed out that most branches would be forced to drastically reduce morning and evening hours and literacy and children’s programs; summer reading programs would be streamlined or

eliminated. Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library was quoted as saying, ‘‘we’re not a frill, we are an essential service, and more than 30,000 children visit our libraries every day’’. Councilman Larry Seabrook (D-Bronx) predicted that the mayor would have a fight on his hands if the money wasn’t restored. David Weprin (D-Queens) said, ‘‘we’re going to fight for it because libraries benefit our most vulnerable citizens, children, and the elderly’’. As a result of the lobbying by library supporters and a pro-library city council, the funding for the three systems will be reduced by 5 per cent rather than 15 per cent (Library Journal, 2002a). One of the high points is that the libraries will be able to support six-day-aweek services, and they will attempt to restore some of the collection and program enhancements that had been planned before the cuts. At the same time, there were new projects for Brooklyn Public Library (BPL). The plans for the city’s first Visual and Performing Arts Library (VPA), a $75 million, 150,000 square foot structure, were announced (Oder, 2002b). The VPA, which will be part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), has the support of mayor Bloomberg. Groundbreaking is planned for 2005 and the opening for 2007. However, at this point BPL has only 10 to 15 per cent of the $75 million, and will have to launch a major fundraising campaign if the VPA is to become a reality. The literature is full of similar news items; the only differences are in the locations of the libraries, the names of the donors, and the amount of money received or lost. For example, in North Carolina, governor Mike Easley’s office announced in mid-May that they would have to withhold the May and June aid payments for public safety and welfare, including $2.1 million in support for libraries (American Library Association, 2002b). This 15 per cent cut in the annual allotment was in addition to an earlier 7 per cent reduction. And FY 2002-2003 is not looking much better. Likewise, in Arkansas, Department of Education director Ray Simon recommended eliminating the State Aid to Public Libraries program in FY 2003-2004 (Library Journal, 2002b). Ashley county librarian Henrietta

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Thompson spoke for many libraries throughout the country when she said, ‘‘we can function on what we get, but we can’t ever do anything more than we are doing now. We will never be able to make any progress if we keep losing funds.’’ Unless things change, her library will receive only about $8,000 of the $13,000 she had budgeted, and this was already down from nearly $22,000 last year. Add the Spokane (Wash.) Public Library to the list. The library will be eliminating or freezing 13 positions, curtailing branch hours, and reducing the materials budget to cope with a 5.7 per cent cut (Library Journal, 2002c). In Los Angeles county the board of supervisors voted to restore $7.2 million of $8.4 million that was to be cut from the budget, which saved them from having to reduce hours of service by one-third or closing 15 branches (American Library Association, 2002c). However, there is still the possibility of cuts because the state budget is yet to be approved. On the bright side, a widow who died last year left most of her estate, $1.2 million, to the Ventura County Library, specifying that the income from the bequest (about $60,000 annually) be used to buy books for her local branch library (Library Journal, 2002d). In Minnesota, the Mayo Clinic has promised $500,000 to the Rochester Public Library Foundation (Library Journal, 2002e, f). The pledge, which includes an initial gift of $250,000 and a promise of $50,000 per year for five years in matching grants, will expand services to youth, non-English-speaking patrons, and those without access to basic technology. It will also make it possible to enlarge collections. The young-adult area will be named in honor of the Mayo Clinic. In Contra Costa county, CA, $1.1 million in matching funds from the county will make it possible to keep branch libraries open beyond the county’s minimum of 29 hours per week (Library Journal, 2002f). The cities are required to match the county’s contribution. Another $200,000 will be used to purchase books, and 50 staff members have been hired for the extra hours. Although John Berry reminds us that ‘‘libraries are still, and should be, dependent on taxes’’, and that we should not ‘‘let the

government off the hook’’ (Berry, 2002). There is a trend toward libraries establishing foundations with full-time development officers (Albanese, 2002). For example, the Public Library of Des Moines Foundation has been raising $350,000 per year and this amount is growing. These monies are used to augment the budgets for books, databases, and special programs. Berry is not alone in warning about fundraising backfiring. There has long been concern that aggressive fundraising will send the wrong message, and in the wake of success budgets will be even more severely slashed and the concept of public libraries as essential institutions will be lost. However many libraries are finding that just the opposite is true, and that fundraising – from establishing an endowment to setting up matching funds with a municipal, county, or state agency – raises the library profile rather than lowers it. The tension between private fundraising and government support is likely to continue, and libraries will continue to seek to find the right balance. So, expect predictable news items to continue. Expect more items about successful partnerships, aggressive fundraising, bequests and large grants, lobbying for more generous public funding, and tales of woefully inadequate funding. Eileen Fitzsimons Fitzsimons Editorial Services, Chicago, IL, USA

References Albanese, A.R. (2002), ‘‘Foundations for the future’’, Library Journal, Vol. 127 No. 9, p. 8. American Library Association (2002a), 3 June, available at: www.ala.org/alonline/news/2002.html American Library Association (2002b), 20 May, available at: www.ala.org/alonline/news/2002.html American Library Association (2002c), 1 July, available at: www.ala.org/alonline/news/2002.html Berry, J.N. III (2002), ‘‘Don’t let the government off the hook’’ [Editorial], Library Journal, Vol. 127 No. 9, p. 8. Library Journal (2002a), 1 July, available at: libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/index Library Journal (2002b), 17 June, available at: http:// libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/index Library Journal (2002c), 29 May, available at: http:// libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/index Library Journal (2002d), 27 June, available at: http:// libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/index

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Library Journal (2002e), 5 June, available at: http:// libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/index Library Journal (2002f), 15 June, available at: http:// libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/index Oder, N. (2002a), ‘‘NYC libraries face 15 per cent cut’’, Library Journal, 15 March, available at: http:// libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/index Oder, N. (2002b), ‘‘Brooklyn PL plans new arts library’’, Library Journal, 15 June, available at: http:// libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/index

Internet Public library financing Keywords Internet, Public libraries, Finance

Throughout this issue of The Bottom Line, there are a number of articles exploring a variety of public library financing topics. In keeping with our theme, let’s take a look at some Internet resources on public library financing. Perhaps the best place to start is the Free Management Library (http://www.managementhelp.org/) developed by Authenticity Consulting and hosted by the Management Assistance Program. The Free Management Library consists of a wealth of net resources arranged according to 72 management categories such as business planning, facilities management, leadership development, and taxation. The two categories most applicable for public libraries are Basic Guide to Non-profit Financial Management (http://www.managementhelp.org/finance/ np_fnce/np_fnce.htm) and Non-profit Fundraising and Grantwriting (http:// www.managementhelp.org/fndrsng/np_raise/ np_raise.htm). The Basic Guide to Non-profit Financial Management page is divided into four main subjects: (1) basics; (2) activities in the yearly accounting cycle; (3) special topics; and (4) general resources. Under basics, resources cover such beginning questions as fiscal sponsorship, the treasurer of

the board, getting an accountant or bookkeeper, finding a banker, and buying accounting software. Under activities in the yearly accounting cycle, you will find nonprofit bookkeeping, financial controls, and such yearly operating activities as: designing a budget, managing cash flow, credit and collections, and managing program finance. Financial statements and analysis are also covered. The special topics section includes materials on whether to lease or buy, financial assessments and audits, and coping with budget cutbacks. Finally the general resources section lists print resources, sites of online information, and online discussion groups for non-profits. Meanwhile, the Non-profit Fundraising and Grantwriting page arranges resources according to such subcategories as: an overview of funding sources and their relative advantages and disadvantages, the board’s role in fundraising, registration of fundraising activities, grantwriting and proposals, fundraising online, fundraising software, and whether to hire professional fundraisers. Principles In fundraising, as with most things, ideas and details change steadily, but basic principles don’t. In 1989, James Swan, director of the Great Bend (Kansas) Library, wrote an article for the Wilson Library Bulletin on ‘‘fund-raising for the small public library’’ that he has reprinted with permission on his own web site (http://www.ckls.org/ ~ jswan/ fundraisingwilson.html). It features a great deal of good advice on raising money for small public libraries. Among the rules for fundraising that Swan outlines are: (1) give the donor some recognition in what you are offering; (2) have a specific project in mind; (3) have a specific donor in mind; (4) help the donor visualize the end-product; (5) have a specific amount in mind for the donation; and (6) ask for the gift confident that you will receive it. While his main point in the article is you will never get anything unless you ask and ask again,

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he also listed a number of useful tips for a general capital fund drive: . Set your goal. . Seek a lead donor who will give at least 10 per cent of that goal. . Have everyone involved in the fundraising contribute something to ensure their own commitment to the project. . Never ask for less than $100. You can accept less, but don’t ask for less. . Choose, recruit, and train askers. . Develop a list of prospective donors and decide how much to ask each to donate. . Once you have raised 20 per cent of your money, kick off the public fund drive. . When the goal is reached, celebrate and recognize the donors and the askers.

literacy; to preserve the library as a place where a record of the history of Boulder is maintained for future generations; and to pursue new technologies to assist the disabled in using the library. As part of this plan, chapter 9 dealt with ‘‘long term financing strategies’’ (http:// www.boulder.lib.co.us/general/mplan/ dist8.html) and discussed such options as tax increases, new fees, and new relationships with regional governments. On a larger scale, the New York Public Library has a host of contribution programs in place. Their web site (https://www2.nypl.org/ support/index.htm) shows a range of activities. There are several ‘‘friend’’ type groups that a patron can join, from the general friends of the library to the more specialized Schomburg Society that supports the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture to the heavyhitter’s (25K and up) President’s Council. A page on planned giving outlines the possibilities for estate bequests. Special events and programs are described and promoted. Corporate support, foundations, and governments are all given their own pages. Finally, the library shop offers one more outlet for fundraising. The California State Library (http:// www.library.ca.gov/html/locser4.html) offers California public library facilities planning and financing services through its Library Development Services Bureau. They provide technical assistance in: general library facility project planning, library facility needs assessments and master plans, site selection, building program review, project budget information, funding sources, and architectural plans review.

Case studies of public library successes The Kansas City Public Library is involved in just such a fund drive in order to find a new home for their central facility downtown. Their fundraising campaign has its own web site (http://www.kclibrary.org/about/campaign/ info.htm) that outlines exactly what the library is planning on doing. They have purchased an old bank building in the downtown area and are renovating it and adding a parking garage. The cost for each part of the project is identified, as are the funding sources and the justification for the project as a whole. The Providence Public Library has an annual fund (http://www.provlib.org/about/support/ charitable/annual/annual.htm) operated by their development office. This is essentially a friends of the library type of operation that gives donors a different status according to how much they give. Donors can be friends, advocates, guardians, patrons, champions, or conservators depending how deep their pockets are. The Boulder Public Library devised an overall master plan several years ago that set forth a set of goals for the library to achieve. Among these goals were: to pursue and offer new information technologies to the public, while maintaining free access to developing information resources to everyone in our community; to increase and improve training opportunities for the public, library staff, children, and teachers; to improve child

Further options LibraryHQ.com is a private organization that produces a web-based portal site for the library profession. They have several pages of net resources for library professionals and one of them is on funding and grant sources (http:// www.libraryhq.com/funding.html). Sections on this page cover fundraising books, articles, and web sites as well as resources on commercial partnership programs, scholarships, and foundations.

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The Public Library Association has its own page of net resources (http://www.pla.org/ resources/resources.html). One of the most critical publications accessible on their site is Policy Considerations for Public Libraries Accepting Donations (http://www.pla.org/ resources/donate.html). Here the PLA examines the significance of public libraries accepting non-tax sources of revenue. They consider the impact of fundraising on public sources of funding and the policy implications of accepting support from non-governmental organizations. PLA has also co-sponsored a couple of courses related to fundraising as part of the Certified Public Library Administrator Program (http://www.pla.org/projects/certification/ certification.html). One is ‘‘Dollars and sense: tools for planning and carrying out your library’s mission’’; (http://www.pla.org/projects/ certification/certification_budget.html) and covers the principles and practices of budgeting and finance, including effective use of public sector budgeting techniques, cost accounting, performance measures, and capital project budgets. The other course is ‘‘BB&T = bucks for books, buildings, and technology’’ (http:// www.pla.org/projects/certification/ certification_fundraising.html) and covers the preparation of a fundraising plan for a library facility and other library activities. It teaches students how to develop a fundable grant application. Finally, it’s sometimes a good idea to broaden your horizons a little to find items somewhat off-point, but still useful. For example, the New York City Small Business Resource Center is devoted to helping entrepreneurs start their own for-profit small businesses in the city, but the chapter on writing a business plan (http:// www2.nypl.org/smallbiz/business/writing/ writing_intro.htm) would prove helpful to any organization pursuing funding. Comments on this column are welcome and can be sent to [email protected]. Or visit my web page (http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/ ~ maxymuk/home/home.html). John Maxymuk Reference Librarian at the Paul Robeson Library, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ, USA

Book reviews Edited by Kay Ann Cassell and Marina I. Mercado

Becoming a Fundraiser: the Principles and Practice of Library Development Steele, V. and Elder, S.D. American Library Association Chicago 2000 2nd edition Keywords Fundraising, Library donations

In this newly revised and updated version of their book, the authors inform the reader that by the time they finish reading and understanding their work, they will be able to choose a fundraising program that meets their needs large or small. They will also learn how fundraising truly works. There is a logical order in the overall flow of the book. Chapter 1, for example, deals with the personality of the library director/fundraiser beginning with the natural reluctance of many librarians who find themselves having to seek outside sources for development. The chapter’s emphasis is on leadership and the ability to lead. The subject of leadership style and tests that can reveal certain personality traits are included in the discussion. The next few chapters discuss the art of fundraising; namely, screening prospects for solicitation, cultivating those prospects who seem most promising in terms of monetary donations or major gifts and stewardship. The reader is guided through the world of MAGIC (Means, Age, Giver, Involvement and Contacts) where that acronym and all that it implies is used by the librarian/director in evaluating every contact he or she makes. There is much useful information on the psychology of donations and the reasons for giving. Development programs are discussed at length but primarily in terms of what the authors refer to as ‘‘ambitious’’ programs as opposed to ‘‘less ambitious’’ programs such as those using friends groups. The focus overall is on those types of situations that will be most common in large public and academic libraries.

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The reasons for fundraising (why are we doing this?) are probably the most important aspect of the process and the authors wisely include this early on in their discussion. The authors raise the salient issues that the leaders and/or the team have to address before and during the fundraising process. These issues can include, but are not limited to, what makes your library unique, how do you see the library developing over the long-term, what are the needs of patrons and how do you meet them, etc. The authors suggest that through the employment of methods such as environmental scanning and patron surveys, goals and objectives can then be devised which will in turn give the development team a clear understanding of what they really want to achieve. The subjects of getting ‘‘yes’’, the ethics of fundraising, using friends groups and types of library events (what can work and what doesn’t) are also covered in the remaining chapters of the book. This book, while allegedly is meant to serve the needs of all libraries, is mostly concerned with the development needs of large public and academic libraries. The authors admit that their examples are largely drawn from the world of academia, since that area is the one with which they are most familiar. Indeed, one would have to agree. Regardless, the librarian in the small or rural library or, even middle-sized for that matter, would be hard put to relate to most of the material contained in this book. For example, many libraries, including this reviewer’s, rely heavily on friends groups for fundraising purposes outside the scope of constrained budgets. The authors’ feelings are that fundraising events that return less than $10,000 should not even be considered. Most libraries don’t have the luxury of that choice. The authors’ style is very analytical, business like and somewhat sterile. One is left with the impression that the way to achieve what you want is through a calculated campaign of getting wealthy donors to contribute to your project, ideally through a major gift. On the other hand, they stress the ethics of the process, emphasizing that both donor and director should be satisfied and ‘‘happy’’. Perhaps in today’s world, however, this objective analysis

of a process that is for most of us, a necessary evil, is a good thing. The reader is most certainly left with the knowledge of how fundraising truly works. A lot of information and analyses are packed into a relatively small space (a larger format would have been appreciated) making this book, despite the criticism leveled above, worthwhile for many public and academic libraries. John L. McManus Director, Millinocket Memorial Library, Millinocket, ME, USA

Coaching in the Library: A Management Strategy for Achieving Excellence Metz, R.F. American Library Association Chicago 2001 Keywords Personnel management, Coaching

If you’re looking to improve the atmosphere of your workplace, especially if you feel current management styles tend toward the critical, this may be the book for you. This is one in a long series of personnel management techniques proposed for libraries over the years. We have used different methods of empowering employees, influencing employee behavior, and meshing different personalities into a smoothly running operation. This latest addition to the literature recommends a purposeful and skillful effort by one individual to help another achieve specific performance goals. Effective coaching, according to the author, is contributive, as opposed, to being critical. The author, who has over 30 years’ practical experience in coaching, presents the information in this book in a straightforward and logical fashion. The first chapter gives a very detailed description of the coaching process and defines the terms and techniques that are needed to understand the recommendations presented in the remainder of the book. It can be an overwhelming amount of information, but persistence and attention pay off, and the rest of the book is easily understood. The author organizes each chapter in five sections. These are a prelude that sets the scene

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for the chapter, followed by what, why and how sections and finally a section that applies one or more of the coaching concepts described in the chapter. Following the overview of coaching in the first chapter, there is a chapter illustrating basic coaching behaviors. Chapters describing and illustrating coaching for individuals, teams, leaders and managers follow. The final chapter focuses on coaching and organizational effectiveness. Each of these chapters, in the application portion, provides a walkthrough of a particular coaching process. While the chapters are similar in layout, each provides information specific to the type of group or individual being coached. This book is a very effective handbook on the coaching process. It provides a blueprint to follow in implementing the process. For the library that is willing to invest the time and effort necessary to get the whole organization working of one accord to improve employee performance and keep lines of dialogue open, this book is an excellent resource. Nancy Z. Young Director, Stonington Free Library, Stonington, CT, USA

those people and their various disciplines, and linking rewards to outcomes. It also includes mechanisms for changing assumptions as the environment changes and upgrading the company’s capabilities to meet the challenges of an ambitious strategy.’’ The authors discuss execution through a series of three building blocks and three core processes. The first building block is the seven essential behaviors of leaders which are: (1) know your people and your business; (2) insist on realism; (3) set clear goals and priorities; (4) follow through; (5) reward the doers; (6) expand people’s capabilities; (7) know yourself.

Execution, The Discipline of Getting Things Done Bossidy, L. and Charan, R. Crown Business New York 2002 Keywords Management, Personnel management, Strategy planning

Larry Bossidy is a well-regarded CEO who is chairman and former CEO of Honeywell International and Allied Signal and Ram Charan is an advisor to CEOs of many companies. This book concentrates on the issue of ‘‘execution’’, which the authors say is the biggest issue facing business today. The authors define ‘‘execution’’ as ‘‘a systematic process of rigorously discussing hows and whats, questioning, tenaciously following through, and ensuring accountability. It includes making assumptions about the business environment, assessing the organization’s capabilities, linking strategy to operations, and the people who are going to implement the strategy, synchronizing

The second building block is creating a framework for cultural change, which the authors describe as setting up processes ‘‘that will change the beliefs and behavior of people in ways that are directly linked to bottom-line results’’. The third building block is focusing on people selection that the authors say is having the right people in the right jobs. The three processes are the people process, the strategy process and the operations process. The people process is the most important. The authors say it is not enough to know whether someone can do their present job, but to know whether they can do the job of tomorrow. No strategy will work unless the right people to execute it are in place. In addition to the corporate strategy, the authors discuss the business unit strategy that should be developed by the people working in the unit. This should be realistic and easy to understand. The operating process provides the detailed plan for the work. It is taking the strategy and making it into a work plan. The authors say that ‘‘it ties a thread through people, strategy and operation, and it translates into assigning goals and objectives for the next year’’. This very pragmatic approach to running businesses large and small is a much-needed contribution to the literature. It ties all the parts together. It shows that leadership must be anchored in reality, that change is always on the horizon, and leaders must be prepared for it. An

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interesting book that will give administrators lots to think about. Kay Ann Cassell Associate Director, Programs and Services for the New York Public Library’s Branch Libraries

Issues in establishing a good public/private partnership In Memphis we had several issues. Funding was at the top of the priority list for a long time. Working against us were other compelling projects competing for attention by public officials: a new AAA baseball stadium and a new convention center/ symphony hall. However, to our advantage, we had several key advocates who made sure our message was getting heard in the public forum. As a result, we made time to meet with any elected official who wanted to talk about the project, good or bad. Developing talking points helped outline why the new Central Library project was crucial to the success of our community. The result was a unanimous vote by the city council to approve the project along with $30 million and 10+ acres of land in a wonderful location. Shelby County agreed to fund up to 25 per cent of the city contribution and this funding added another $10 million for the project. The foundation then contributed the last $20 million to make the overall project viable. Sensitivity to communication was essential. Projects of this size require numerous players for any decision. Bureaucratic process can work at odds with the corporate bottom line approach. Because the library was the ultimate beneficiary in most cases, we maintained a constant pulse check to ensure all parties had needed information all along the way. By active involvement, the library could try to keep important decisions near the top of the list. Then the private sector donors entered the picture. Both as a group and as individuals, new challenges arose. One of the most difficult issues was the public sector’s perception of how easy it was for the library’s foundation to raise ‘‘a little more money’’ for various additions, enhancements, and new needs. The early success of the foundation proved to the city and county that the private sector would spontaneously come forth to fund ‘‘any need’’. Some project components could be expedited because the foundation was not encumbered with the voluminous requirements of publicly bid projects. Once funds had been raised it was very difficult for the city to understand that the

Dollars with sense Partners for the future: how to maximize public and private sectors to build the library of tomorrow Keywords Libraries, Funding, Public sector, Private sector, Construction management, Fund-raising, Gifts

From the first moment of conception, library leaders and elected officials envisioned the new Central Library for Memphis and Shelby County as a public/private partnership. With that decision made, our goal was how to maximize all of the various aspects of the partnership. This article explores several of the key issues, especially in how they relate to libraries. The term ‘‘public/private partnership’’ can mean many things, spanning everything from fighting over whose money will fund the project to trying to expand the role and funding from both sources to reach a community goal. The reality is that every project falls somewhere along the spectrum. You can strategize more effectively once you analyze where your project sits in the overall community goals. There are many well established do’s and don’ts in fundraising. Some of these become paramount when the public and private sectors collaborate. A few key elements of a successful plan would include: (1) Communicate your message to the public and private sectors throughout the project. (2) Recognize and deal with competing projects and their philosophies. (3) Undergo a feasibility study for a capital campaign. (4) Listen, listen, listen to all good ideas. (5) Go after major donors, but don’t forget the community at large. DOI 10.1108/08880450210450951

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foundation had to honor the wishes of the donor when restrictions were placed on the gift. At times, individual donors had trouble understanding the partnership. When donors become excited about their investments in the library, it is important to seize the moment so everyone’s efforts are maximized. Memphis had several wonderful additions including a private donor who added fiber optics to the building and another donor who leveraged its business contacts to further augment the library’s new technology and telephones packages. On the other hand, the public/ private partnership can also tie the library’s hands. At times, prospects/donors suggested good ideas that would stretch the overall resources for the project. These donations could not be accepted since the service or product was part of the original construction specifications. Therefore, the public approval process made it unfeasible to change the scope of work.

wonderful compliment to library staff who make their jobs look so easy! On the other hand, it demonstrated that donors have taken libraries for granted in their communities and donor education and buy-in is vital to a library capital campaign.

Starting fundraising with a capital campaign Similar to most public libraries, Memphis had no tangible historic fundraising to base a capital campaign upon. Therefore, there was no good prospect pool or development staff in place to run a capital campaign. Despite this, we dove in head first. Libraries are very bold in their courage and commitment to raise large gifts with no experience. Memphis did embark upon a comprehensive feasibility study with a well-regarded local fundraising consultant. A feasibility study is crucial to determine whether your goals are achievable. Our three objectives were: (1) How was the library perceived in the world of those who could give? (2) Was there enough private support to conduct a capital campaign? (3) How much money could we raise? While we found the prospective donor pool had feelings about the existing library, they felt they did not know much about the impending new library, nor its impact for the community. The donor pool was also quite taken aback with the complexity of the case statement, indicating that they really had not thought about how a library works or delivers its services. What a

Donor issues in a public/private partnership Understanding your donors is the foundation of any campaign. Donors can easily use the public/ private partnership issues to rationalize their giving decisions. . Tax questions: raise our taxes and fund the project vs. donors who would fund the extras (new collections, new furniture/ equipment, new services, new programs), but not bricks and mortar. . Public funding should be spent on ‘‘real’’ education projects like schools vs. parents who think the library is an extension of their children’s schools. . Political affiliations of donors can be an interesting wild-card as the public/private partnership endures through political elections. . Determine the economic impact of a library, at times when libraries can be hard to ‘‘justify’’ when stadiums and convention centers bring in a major revenue stream when completed. Donor issues with the library Since these issues deal directly with the library, they may be easier to discuss, but remember to hear the arguments from your donors’ perspective. . The library will become obsolete when access to information is easily obtainable through the Internet – build large computer labs instead. . Some believe that the library serves the ‘‘greater good’’ of the community even though they purchase their books at a bookstore vs. the donors who are library customers who wanted to ensure their donations purchase materials of interest to them. . Friends of the library groups raise awareness of library projects, but these grass roots organizations often are not

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composed of the individuals who are prominent volunteer fundraisers in the community. Due to loyalty and longevity, friends groups can feel threatened when others are brought in to fundraise. It is important to discuss in detail the library’s expectations for fundraising. As in Memphis, a win-win resulted as the friends continued to operate along historical lines, the foundation focused on raising major gifts, and a good communication was established by the foundation requesting a friends board member to be a foundation member. As taxpayers, donors feel they have a vested interest in the library, so be prepared to get lots of suggestions. Memphis developed a forum. Every Wednesday morning for two years, we shared our vision with community and business leaders and they gave us their suggestions. Before we reached groundbreaking, virtually all of the criticisms had been dissuaded. We also did get some very good ideas and community ownership of the new library. When Monday mornings rolled around and we heard the library had been the topic of weekend cocktail conversations, we knew we were making inroads.

We knew a new Central Library for Memphis and Shelby County really was a ‘‘once in a lifetime experience’’ and we were not willing to lose the importance of this. We demonstrated that a new public library was vital to the community and worthy of supporting financially. Environmental awareness holds wonderful opportunities What happens when some one has a new idea? Listen, listen, listen. We were well into the developed design and had a facility that was attractive and functional. Our budget had been tight since the day we started, so there were no architectural extras. A fairly prominent woman came to us and asked us what we thought about ‘‘public art’’. After many meetings and discussions, we realized how many benefits this could add: attracting new donors who would not otherwise get involved, bringing esthetic beauty to the building, and demonstrating the

library’s leadership role in providing Memphis with something they had not seen. Nine works of public art were commissioned and $2 million was raised, allowing the library to become a community treasure that encourages every visitor to use each of his/her senses during a library visit. A library is often in an enviable position because it is a reflection of its community. We used this open-ended approach to capitalize on any donor’s request in providing information on all requested topics. Despite a long list of named gifts, we welcomed community ideas which resulted in additional donations in many areas, such as large print, architecture, genealogy digitization, etc. Therefore, while many organizations use named gifts as a literal list of needs, libraries can use them as a stepping stone to demonstrate how the library truly meets the needs of their communities. Establishing the goal The easy answer to establishing a goal is to determine what you need and then raise it. The reality is more complex. For Memphis, that meant a delicate balancing act: the foundation for the library wanted to raise the needed funds, the donors wanted to make a statement for the library with their collective giving and the goal had to be achievable. The Campaign Planning Committee spent many hours determining their recommendation to the foundation. The feasibility study stated that a $20 million goal was plausible and we needed a goal that supported the public/private partnership in light of the overall $70 million project budget. However, no organization in Memphis, except universities and hospitals, had embarked upon such an ambitious goal. With strong leadership at the helm, we swallowed hard and undertook a $20 million goal. We developed a combined marketing/ development strategy for almost everything we did. We tried to anticipate what donors, prospects, public officials, general community, customers, would think, say and do. The press conference announcing the campaign leadership was the first ‘‘public appearance’’ for the entire team. The first gift to the campaign, $1 million from the friends of the

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library, was announced as many public officials looked on. Staying the course Based upon the construction schedule and campaign plan, our capital campaign would run approximately five years. During the course of the campaign we strove diligently to have the community take ownership of the library, to enter into a lasting partnership with each of our donors, and to touch every segment of our community. I do believe the old adage is true: it takes just as much time to raise $1 million as it does $10,000 if you have done your homework. We invested a lot of time and energy in the early stages of the campaign to raise the major gifts. Because public libraries are what they are and serve customers without regard to social or economic status, we paced ourselves so our first gift could be as exciting as our last gift. Our foothold on the future campaign was a fun and easy way for anyone in the community to become a part of the library’s fundraising success. For $20, anyone could purchase a symbolic square foot of the new Central Library. Owners were sent deeds that were actually one square foot stating where their real estate was located. Footholds became hot ticket items for about 18 months and resulted in 14,431 owners and almost $300,000 for the library. Conclusion To date, $19 million of the foundation for the library’s $20 million goal has been raised. While specific campaign goals are important to be met, well-structured fundraising efforts focus on the future, encouraging donors and prospects to keep giving. We will continue to add names to rooms, areas, collections, programs and services because the Memphis
Shelby County Public Library and Information Center will always be bringing its community the library of tomorrow. Betty Anne Wilson Assistant Director for Library Advancement, Memphis
Shelby County Public Library and Information Center, Memphis, TN, USA

Fundraising Edited by Gwendolen Rochester Leighty, Development Officer, Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Washington, DC, USA

Fundraising for special collections Keywords Fund raising, Special libraries, Gifts, Libraries

Introduction Special collections have long played an important role in shaping the identity of libraries. Raising funds to support and enhance these collections presents important opportunities to attract new donors to the library and to the institution. Successful programs are built on a foundation of professional care for collections and excellent communication with existing and potential donors. A library development team that includes the head of special collections is needed to sustain such efforts. Effective team members understand the development cycle, how to manage donor relationships, and the challenges of accepting and stewarding gifts to special collections. A successful fundraising program for special collections will spill over to the rest of the library’s fundraising efforts. Why focus on special collections? Special collections have long played an important role in shaping the identity of libraries and even the institutions they serve. In an era where technology is making libraries more homogenous, retrospective and rare book collections increasingly distinguish one institution from another (Schreyer, 2001). It is not surprising then that libraries that have not previously focused on raising money to enhance or support their special collections are now developing strategies to do so, while libraries with well established programs in this area are redoubling their efforts. DOI 10.1108/08880450210450960

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Fundraising for special collections may be the primary focus or one of several areas of emphasis in a well-integrated library development program. Regardless of the focus, a successful program will attract new donors to the library and/or institution and will require the involvement of library staff to assist the development staff with its work (Terry, 2001).

the same time every year is always preferable to unfulfilled promises of grand exhibits, fourcolor publications, or quarterly updates on the use of the collection.

Lay the framework To ensure consistent, long-term fundraising results, the special collections department must have or must build a history of providing excellent care to its collections and professional stewardship to existing donors. This includes following best practices for processing, preserving, and making accessible existing collections and knowing how much these activities cost. It also includes adequately and consistently recognizing gifts when they are received and then providing stewardship reports, at least annually, to living donors and others with a strong interest in the material. Donors who have previously made gifts of materials or cash to special collections have already demonstrated a strong interest and commitment and, if respected and nurtured, are more likely to make new, larger gifts than those with whom relationships have yet to be built. Understand the donor Donors of collections have typically invested a great deal of time and money in building the collection they are donating or may be presenting the library with their own intellectual output. In either case, they may have far greater emotional attachment to the material than they would to an equivalent monetary gift. It is also more likely that such donors will have had previous experience in providing financial support to an organization, but not the experience of donating a collection of materials. At a minimum, such donors require and deserve explicit communication about the proposed care of the material and what they may expect in terms of stewardship reports. Especially for new fundraising programs, it is important that expectations are realistic. A concise, well-written report sent to a donor at

Communicate about cost and time issues Unless a donor has previously made a gift of materials to your library, it is safe to assume that the donor has not considered the cost to the library of accepting the gift or the time involved in professionally processing the collection. Whenever possible, it is very helpful to the donor, the library, and the institutional development staff (when they are involved) to understand the costs and timeframes associated with processing and preserving materials accepted for the collection. Additional information about how much it costs to prepare real or virtual exhibits or about how a travel stipend would enable scholars to come on site to use the collection can generate a great deal of excitement for the donor. With this information, the donor can more easily see the need for a cash gift to process the collection and endowment funds to provide permanent support and enhanced access to the collection. Even if the donor cannot immediately fund this effort, he/she is fully informed and may be in a future position to provide such support. Offering to match the donor’s own financial gift from unrestricted private funds is one way to provide additional leverage for cash gifts from donors who may justifiably feel that the materials are so exceptional that no additional gift is warranted. No matter how difficult it is to ask for a monetary gift at the time an in-kind gift is made, it is far easier than trying to solicit an uninformed and possibly dissatisfied donor long after you have received the materials. A team effort Although the library director plays the pivotal role in a successful library development program, the head of special collections must be part of the development team – especially if special collections is or is to become a key fund raising priority for the library. Steele observed, ‘‘a library director and a head of special collections who share a commitment to fundraising can be a formidable force for library

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development’’ (Steele, 1995). It is likely that the head of special collections and the special collections staff have relationships with collection donors and are well aware of potential donors inside and outside the university and/or local community. In spite of what appears to be a natural and profitable alliance, a frequent complaint of library development staff is that the head of special collections is not interested in fundraising or, in some cases, is even antagonistic toward development efforts (Paustenbaugh and Koch, 2001). In many cases such responses are a result of poor communication about role expectations (Steele, 1995). When the head of special collections is part of a well-functioning development team, he/she attends regular meetings at which fundraising projects and goals are discussed, donor strategies are planned, and there are opportunities to openly address concerns about the fundraising process. Such an environment fosters shared accountability for results and helps educate all team members. Not only does the head of special collections gain a better understanding of the development cycle and the management of donors, but also the development staff gain a far greater appreciation for the collections and the challenges involved in accepting and stewarding gifts. Ask the right questions Even when the head of special collections has few reservations about active involvement in fundraising, he/she may have difficulty in communicating how private funds would be of greatest use to the department. Likewise, a director of library development may not know enough about special collections to effectively guide a development program with this focus. The following questions can help open the channels of communication between the head of special collections and the director of library development: . If you had money what would you like to do that you cannot do now? . Do you have a wish list and if so, what kinds of things are on this list? . Do you have funds available for special opportunity purchases and if so, how have you utilized them?

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Are there gaps in the collection and could these gaps be filled through purchases? Do you have any collections that are not fully processed? Do you have materials that are unusable because of the format they are in? Are there items in the collections that should be preserved by microfilming or digitizing? Which collections did donors who are still living give and what kind of communication do you have with them? Do you have communication with the heirs of any deceased donors to special collections? What are the most heavily used materials or most frequently requested images in the collection? Are there groups or organizations that are or should be strongly interested in the collections or in what you are doing? What kind of relationships do you have with them?

Realize the spillover effect Once initiated, a library development program with a focus on special collections will raise awareness of special collections, add to the library’s and institution’s reputations, and increase private support to other areas of the library (Terry, 2001). Exhibits, tours, and other public events highlighting special collections materials will bring many people to the library that otherwise may have never visited. Some development programs have taken this even a step further by taking treasures from the special collections department on the road, where an even more diverse audience can be inspired and informed about the library (Dunham, 2002). Thoughtfully planned, a special collections development program allows the library to show off traditional and newfound expertise in areas such as conservation of materials, digitization for access and preservation, and building superb collections in highly visible ways. With these critical ingredients in place, your library should go far in achieving success in fundraising. Good luck! Jennifer F. Paustenbaugh Head of Special Collections and University Archives and Puterbaugh Professor of Library Service at Oklahoma State University (OSU)

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References Dunham, C. (2002), Using Your Treasure to Rope in Gifts, presentation at ALADN 2002 Conference, San Antonio, 19 March (ALADN 2002 Conference Program), available at: www.library.okstate.edu/scua/ jpaust/calendar/march19.htm Paustenbaugh, J.F. and Koch, D. (2001), Fund Raising for Special Collections, presentation at ALADN 2001 Conference, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 2 April. Schreyer, A.D. (2001), Elective Affinities: Private Collectors and Special Collections in Libraries, University of Chicago Libraries, Chicago, IL. Steele, V. (1995), ‘‘The role of special collections in library development’’, in Burlingame, D. (Ed.), Library Fundraising: Models for Success, American Library Association, Chicago, IL, pp. 72-84. Terry, G.D. (2001), ‘‘Capitalizing on special collections to produce a successful development program’’, in Butler, M. (Ed.), Successful Fundraising: Case Studies of Academic Libraries, Association of Research Libraries, Washington, DC, pp. 103-10.

If you want my 2¢ worth

my personal life, I have raised two great daughters and I think that is a major achievement. TBL: Who are your heroes in real life? Hildreth: I don’t have many heroes or heroines, but my father has been a great influence on me. He is a hard-working individual who cares greatly for others and I hope that I am somewhat similar to him. I do respect Mary Stephens, Yolo County, California, librarian, who gave me my first job in California and has always supported my professional development. She is one of the most completely committed public servants I have ever known. I also greatly respect Regina Minudri. I had the pleasure of serving as her deputy at the San Francisco Public Library, but not for as long as I wished, due to her sudden stroke. She made many contributions to the San Francisco Public Library, other California public libraries, and the profession.

TBL interviews Susan Hildreth, city librarian, San Francisco Public Library, and formerly deputy director of Sacramento Public Library, county librarian for the Auburn-Placer County Library, director of the Benicia Public Library, and treasurer of the California Library Association.

TBL: What do you think of corporate sponsorships? While they bring significant funds to libraries, do they threaten the library’s neutrality? Hildreth: I believe that public/private partnerships are very important in providing excellence in library programming and facilities that may not be available through public funds alone. Public funds may often support basic service levels, but that margin of excellence that we seek to provide in our libraries is often supported with private funds. Private funds do not threaten the neutrality of the library when acknowledgements and future library activities of sponsors are clearly articulated and agreed upon by the library and the sponsor.

TBL: What do you consider your greatest achievement? Hildreth: I don’t feel that I have a ‘‘greatest achievement’’. I have done much collaborative work over the years with many skilled colleagues, both librarians and support staff. The work of those teams has been very satisfying, from drafting new policies to holding community meetings. I do feel proud when I see beautiful libraries come to fruition when I have been involved in the planning. In

TBL: How do you see the funding mix for public libraries shifting over the next ten years? Will the local, state, and federal pieces of the pie grow or diminish? Hildreth: I would imagine that local dollars will remain the mainstay for public library funding over the next ten years. That has been the case in most states historically. Although state dollars may increase somewhat, library service provision is really a local issue; and, given the many other demands for state funds, I would

Edited by Kent C. Boese, Arts Cataloger, Cataloging Services Department, Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Washington, DC, USA Keywords Librarians, Public libraries, Financial management, Funding, Sponsorship, Fund-raising

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doubt that mix would increase significantly. We have seen an increase in state funds for library construction in California. I anticipate that that may continue, but would predict that state funding will be focused on one-time expenses, like construction, in contrast to on-going operating expenses. I would hope that federal funding would increase, particularly if the Library Services and Technology Act is approved at the proposed levels. Federal funding for public libraries really serves as our venture capital; and, as service trends continue to change rapidly, I would hope that federal funds would support demonstration projects of those new trends in the states. TBL: In 20 years, will libraries purchase (as opposed to license or lease) any information resources? Hildreth: I am sure that in 20 years the mix of library purchases of information resources will change. As electronic information sources become more and more widespread and as the ability of libraries to provide access to that information in on-line environments increases, libraries will license or lease access to information, in contrast to purchasing materials. But, I envision that there will be a continuing need for print materials, although our dependence on those materials will not be as significant as it is today. TBL: What do you perceive to be the most compelling financial concern facing libraries in the next five years? How would you address this issue? Hildreth: I think that the most compelling concern in the next five years for public libraries is to remain relevant and attractive for our current and future users. If libraries do not remain relevant, we may not be successful in retaining the level of funding that we have, let alone increasing that level of funding for enhanced services. We have always been in competition for scarce public resources, and I think this competition will become even more challenging in the next five years. Partnering with other service agencies in your community to create synergy in public service and continuing to make ourselves relevant for users

are key actions to address the issue of competition for limited funds. TBL: If money were no object, what is the most significant change that you would institute in your library? Hildreth: Although these changes are not necessarily ‘‘cutting edge’’, if money were no object, I would increase the library’s materials budget from its current 10 per cent of total budget to at least 20 per cent. I would also expand and make consistent operating hours for all library facilities, with a goal of at least 80 hours per week per facility. I would increase programming availability so that story hours, book clubs and other programming were scheduled, at least, once a day. Finally, I would create 24/7 access to library staff and resources. TBL: What fundraising activities have worked for your library? Hildreth: The San Francisco Public Library is very fortunate to have the strong support of the friends and foundation of the San Francisco Public Library. The friends and foundation utilize many types of fundraising activities including the operation of two bookstores, on-line book sales, author programming, individual, foundation and corporate appeals, and capital campaigns, to name just a few. Although many fundraising activities may be profitable as one-time events, you must spend money to raise money. If you are in a library environment where your main support is through a friends group, this concept is often one that is not readily accepted. To embark on a comprehensive fundraising plan for your library, the library or the support group must be willing to commit to some level of infrastructure to ensure success. TBL: How important are digitization projects to your organization, and how did you allocate funds to undertake this initiative? Hildreth: Digitization projects are very important to our library and we have spent much time digitizing many historic photographs, which are mounted on our Web site (http://sfpl.org), and continue to work on

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this priority. We are also trying to prioritize other types of material for digitization. These efforts do require a commitment and have been funded in our library by an allocation of funds, primarily dedication of positions to these efforts, that has developed over a period of several years.

TBL: How did you first get involved with library finance issues? Did you have a mentor? Hildreth: In my first professional position as a suburban branch manager, I felt that I was prepared to handle the library service issues, but not the management issues, i.e. budgeting and supervision. Luckily, I was working close to a university that offered an MBA program, in which, I enrolled. This program was much more rigorous than library school and took several years to complete. I have always been glad that I received my MBA, because it has helped me immensely in the business aspects of managing libraries. Later in my career, I was able to serve as the manager for all the business operations of the Sacramento Public Library and was truly able to focus on managerial issues. Although I learned much from that position, I still did miss the lack of involvement in public service issues.

TBL: If your budget were decreased by 10 per cent, what would your response be? Hildreth: That is a very timely question because we had to prepare a 10 per cent reduction budget for 2002/03. Because we develop our operating budget with a mix of on-going and one-time expenditures, we have some flexibility from year to year. The one-time expenditures drop out of the baseline budget each year and provide the flexibility to support increased on-going expenditures to the baseline, if necessary. In our recent 10 per cent reduction planning, we eliminated all new initiatives and many one-time purchases and protected our on-going services and operating hours. If I did not have that latitude, I would always try to prevent reductions from any public services in a budget decrease. If a decrease is anticipated as a short-term event, you may consider an acrossthe-board reduction, but if it appears to be a long-term situation, I would consider looking at all programs and services and considering some for elimination, instead of having all services reduced which results in the entire service program being diminished. TBL: From your years of service in the profession, is there one piece of advice on fiscal responsibility that you would like to give today’s library managers-to-be? Hildreth: Your library should be treated as a business. Even though we are not running profit-making organizations, principles of effective management and budgeting should be applied to everything that we do. You must look at your budget analytically and make all your decisions based on facts and statistics, not on instinct. Make sure that you understand and can justify your budget to board members, elected officials and the public. Your credibility as a good manager will be assured if you can clearly articulate the rationale and intricacies of your budget.

TBL: What do you think libraries can do/ offer to make better funding of libraries a higher priority in our society? Hildreth: I think that creative partnerships are the key for better funding. Libraries are the heart of our communities and neighborhoods; and we need to be integrated into the social service fabric of those communities and neighborhoods. Although those of us who are close to libraries know about the wide variety of services that we provide, there are still many members of the public who do not have a clue as to what we do. Also, in communities with many residents new to America, the concept of the public library and its role in society is unknown to them. By partnering with other service organizations in the community, we can increase our effectiveness and make sure everyone knows about the important services that we provide. When we successfully tell our story, funding libraries will become a higher priority. TBL: What do you think are the best ways to help insure free and equal access to information for library users? Hildreth: I think that strong public support for the critical role of the public library will insure free and equal access to information for library

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users. I think providing this information to users at no charge and in a wide variety of formats will insure that all users, regardless of their means or their abilities, will be able to get the information that they need. This is a critical principle to protect in our public libraries.

of case studies should provide good information for students. I will admit that there is nothing like front-line experience to help you learn about financing. Even if library schools are not preparing students, the libraries in which they become employed should be training them. I think it is important in any size organization to make sure that your staff has a basic understanding of the library budget and how it is developed. It will help demystify the funding situation for staff and users.

TBL: What are the most important skills that new librarians need to succeed in the twenty-first century? Hildreth: I think new librarians must be very willing to and comfortable with embracing constant change, for that is the environment in which we operate. Flexibility is the key in our profession today. New librarians must be able to relate to all types of users and must also be able to keep their eye on the big picture of services. Most importantly, new librarians must be able to reflect and relate to the communities that they serve. Our communities will continue to be diverse and changing; and it is the librarian’s role to be able to acknowledge that diversity, and create a program of services that effectively addresses it. TBL: Are library schools doing enough to prepare librarians to be sound financial managers? Hildreth: Now this is a tough question! I am not as familiar as I should be with current curriculums in library schools, but, as I mentioned in response to a previous question, I know that I was not adequately prepared for financial work when I was in library school which was over 25 years ago. Discussion of financial management principles and the review

TBL: If you had the opportunity to do it all over again, would you still choose a career in this profession? Why or why not? Hildreth: I believe that I am making a valuable contribution to the health of our society by working in this field. Although I don’t get the immediate positive feedback that our reference or children’s services staff does, I know that, by making sure that library staff has the resources and infrastructure they need to do their job well, I am contributing to valued public service. When I began my career just about 30 years ago, there were not as many choices offered to young women as there are in this day and age. It is gratifying to see the opportunities available to young women; and I would say that if I were choosing a career today, I would probably be inclined to consider the law. It seems as if I am making decisions based on legal issues on a regular basis in my current position and find myself in the role of a mediator or facilitator, which is often the case with lawyers. Needless to say, the law might be more lucrative, but probably not as satisfying as making a difference in the life of a library user.

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Literati Club Awards for Excellence Emerald is pleased to announce that

James H. Walther Editor of The Bottom Line: Managing Library Finances

has been awarded the distinction of Leading Editor. The award is made in recognition of his professionalism, commitment and contribution to the success of the journal.

James H. Walther receiving his award from Dr Keith Howard, Managing Director, at the Awards ceremony held on 11 April 2002 in London

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Literati Club Awards for Excellence Susan M. Ryan Edward Bennett Williams Library, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, DC, USA

is the recipient of the journal’s Outstanding Paper Award for Excellence for her paper

‘‘Cost inflation by page reductions: a discrete example of new price increases in legal serials’’ which appeared in The Bottom Line, Vol. 14 No. 1, 2001 Susan M. Ryan is the Reference/Education Services Librarian at the Edward Bennett Williams Law Library, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, DC. As such, she not only answers questions at the reference desk, but is also responsible for planning and co-ordinating the library’s educational programs (classes, workshops, etc.) for law students. She has held this position since December 1996. Prior to that time, she worked for the EBW Law Library in the Acquisitions Department in a variety of positions, including Head of Ordering. Ms Ryan received her M.L.S. from the University of Maryland in 1996. She is an active member of both the American Association of Law Libraries and the Law Librarians’ Society of Washington, DC.

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Note from the publisher Sponsorships Emerald is delighted to be regular sponsor of the following awards. ALA LITA/Library Hi Tech Award For Outstanding Communication for Continuing Education in Library and Information Science The award may be given to an individual or institution for a single seminal work, or a body of work, taking place within (or continuing into) the five years preceding the award. The purpose of the award is to recognize outstanding achievement in communication in continuing education within the field of library and information technology. Past winners have been: . Charles W. Bailey, Jr., University of .

.

.

Houston Libraries, Houston, TX Ching-chih Chen, Simmons College, Boston, MA Walt Crawford, The Research Libraries Group, Mountain View, CA Continuing Education Services, School of Library and Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison,

.

.

.

.

.

Madison, WI Larry L. Learn, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc., Dublin, OH Michael Kaplan, Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington, IN Ann S. Okerson, Yale University, New Haven, CT Mark Hinnebusch, Florida Center for Library Automation, Gainesville, FL The Digital Imaging and Preservation Research Unit of Cornell University

.

Library Illinois OCLC Users Group

The Bottom Line: Managing Library Finances Volume 15 . Number 4 . 2002 . pp. 195–196 # MCB UP Limited . ISSN 0888-045X

Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals Library History Group Award The award is made annually for the best essay on library history published in the UK within the previous calendar year. It aims to improve the quality and increase the quantity of writing on library history. Any member of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals may nominate a published essay for consideration. Previous winners are: . Martin Hewitt, ‘‘Confronting the modern city: the Manchester Free Public Library, 1850-80’’, Urban History, Vol. 27 No. 1, 2000, pp. 62-88. . Dr Christopher Skelton-Foord, ‘‘Surveying the circulating-library scene: popular British fiction, 1770-1830’’, Bibliotheken in der literarischen Darstellung/Libraries in Literature, edited by Peter Vodosek and Graham Jefcoate (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999). . Mr Mark Purcell, ‘‘Useful weapons for the defence of that cause: Richard Allestree, John Fell and the foundation of the Allestree Library’’, The Library, Vol. 21 No. 2 Public Relations and Publicity Awards These awards aim to recognize and reward the valuable work of librarians and information managers in promoting library services through the production of publicity material and running of innovative promotional campaigns with limited resources. Six categories of library PR and publicity activity are celebrated: (1) Promotional campaign with a budget under £500 (2) Promotional campaign with a budget over £500 (3) Printed publicity material (4) Multimedia and Web (5) Sponsorship and partnership (6) Tom Farries Award for personal PR achievement International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions Emerald also supports the work of the professional associations as an ongoing gold

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Note from the publisher

The Bottom Line: Managing Library Finances Volume 15 . Number 4 . 2002 . 195–196

corporate sponsor of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. In 2002 it also sponsored the official IFLA satellite preconference ‘‘Statistics in practice: measuring and managing’’, held in Loughborough 13-15 August. Hosted by the IFLA Section on Statistics, and the Library and Information Statistics Unit at Loughborough University, the conference focused on the use of statistics in library management.

role of Library Web manager. He was the Strathclyde manager of the GAELS (Glasgow allied electronically with Strathclyde) project, a SHEFC-funded investigation of electronic library collaboration in the west of Scotland. He is a founder member of the steering committee of the International Conference on Information Technology and Information Literacy and is a visiting lecturer at the Strathclyde department of computing and information science. He is an active researcher with the Digital Libraries in Networked Environments group at Strathclyde, and his work on courseware applications in information literacy has been published in Aslib Proceedings and the Association of Learning Technology Journal. With effect from Volume 17 Number 1 (2003), Anthony Chalcraft has been appointed editor of Reference Reviews. Anthony is college librarian at York St John College, York, UK. He is editor of Walford’s Guide to Reference Material.

Appointments With effect from Volume 30 Number 3 (2002), Mike McGrath took over as editor of Interlending and Document Supply. Mike worked at the British Library for 32 years, in the last 12 years being heavily involved in marketing the remote services in Europe and latterly in the UK. He trained first as a mathematician and in later life as an historian and also has marketing qualifications. He lives in Leeds, UK with his wife and son. Dr David Bawden, a senior lecturer in the Department of Information Science at City University, London, was appointed editor of Journal of Documentation with effect from Volume 58 Number 4 (2002). Dr Bawden originally qualified in organic chemistry and has MSc and PhD degrees in information science. He was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Information Scientists in 1985, and is author of four books and 140 papers. Dr Bawden was previously editor of IT Link (ASLIB) and Perspectives in Information Management (Bowker Saur), and of two monograph series. Nick Joint has been appointed editor of Library Review, with effect from Volume 52 Number 1 (2003). Nick is head of Reference and Information at the Andersonian Library, and senior research fellow in the Centre for Digital Library Research, University of Strathclyde, UK. He began his career in the Central Public Health Laboratory Library, before leaving to join the British Library team that converted the printed GK catalogue to online format. He went on to work at the University of Glasgow and then Strathclyde as a subject librarian, latterly combining this with

Research Emerald is sponsoring the fieldwork phase of some research which is already in progress, on information in the Namibian liberation struggle. The project is being conducted by Dr Paul Sturges, Reader in Libraries and Social Development, Department of Information Science, Loughborough University, UK. It has the co-operation of Professor Kingo Mchombu of the Department of Information and Communications Studies, University of Namibia. It aims to obtain an outline assessment of the ways in which information, broadly defined to includes facts and ideas in the whole range of relevant forms, figured in the Namibian liberation struggle. It aims to develop and test a model which will accommodate all the various aspects of information management in the liberation struggle, with a view to both understanding the struggle itself and for general insights into the handling of information in the newly independent state. The researchers aim to publish articles reporting the findings in major international refereed journals.

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Author and title index to volume 15, 2002

The Bottom Line: Managing Library Finances Volume 15 . Number 4 . 2002 . 197–198

2, p. 54

Author and title index Volume 15, 2002

Houbeck, R.L., Jr Leveraging our assets: the academic library and campus leadership K

4, p. 159 Issue & page

1, p. 24

Kostiak, A. Valuing your public library: the experience of the Barrie Public

A

Library, Ontario, Canada

ALADN: the Academic Library

L

Advancement and Development

Lafferty, T. see Davis, D.M.

Network 3, p. 116

Leighty, G.R.

Lawal, I. Science resources: does the Internet make them cheaper, better?

C 3, p. 102

Camille, D. see Ward, S.M. 3, p. 110

(A) case study of successful library

Do librarians dream of electronic serials?

fund-raising: the right mix of deliberate

A beginner’s guide to format selection 1, p. 24

strategy, ‘‘opportunity knocks’’ and

Leighty, G.R. ALADN: the Academic Library

‘‘Lady Luck’’

Advancement and Development

McCombs, G.M. 4, p. 154

Lee, L.A. and Wu, M.M.

Network

Cost benefit analysis: a summary of the 2, p. 54

methodology

Leveraging our assets: the academic library and campus leadership

Holt, G. and Elliott, D.

Houbeck, R.L., Jr D 1, p. 18

1, p. 5

Davis, D.M. and Lafferty, T.

Library fee-based information services: financial considerations

Digital rights management: implications

Ward, S.M., Fong, Y.S. and

for libraries 1, p. 18

Camille, D.

Digital rights management: implications M

for libraries 3, p. 110

Davis, D.M. and Lafferty, T. 3, p. 102

McCombs, G.M.

Do librarians dream of electronic serials?

A case study of successful library

A beginner’s guide to format selection

fund-raising: the right mix of deliberate strategy, ‘‘opportunity knocks’’ and

Lee, L.A. and Wu, M.M.

‘‘Lady Luck’’ E

Marien, S. see O’Connor, L.

Elliott, D. see Holt, G. 2, p. 64

2, p. 64

Meraz, G.

(The) essentials of financial strength

The essentials of financial strength

through sound lobbying fundamentals

through sound lobbying fundamentals

Meraz, G. N F

4, p. 154

4, p. 163

Nicely, D.D.

Fong, Y.S. see Ward, S.M.

Private funding for capital projects

H

O

Holt, G. and Elliott, D.

2, p. 70

O’Connor, L. and Marien, S.

Cost benefit analysis: a summary of the

Recruiting quality business librarians in

methodology

a shrinking labor market

197

Author and title index to volume 15, 2002

2, p. 60

P 2, p. 60

The Bottom Line: Managing Library Finances Volume 15 . Number 4 . 2002 . 197–198

Partnerships and promises: the history and future of library and US

Shuler, J.A. Partnerships and promises: the history and future of library and US Government information

Government information Shuler, J.A. 4, p. 167

Plain English collection budgets:

T 4, p. 167

a collection plan for public libraries Truck, L. 4, p. 163

Private funding for capital projects

V

Nicely, D.D. 4, p. 159 R 2, p. 70

Recruiting quality business librarians in a shrinking labor market O’Connor, L. and Marien, S. S

3, p. 116

Truck, L. Plain English collection budgets: a collection plan for public libraries

Valuing your public library: the experience of the Barrie Public Library, Ontario, Canada Kostiak, A. W

1, p. 5

Science resources: does the Internet make them cheaper, better?

Ward, S.M., Fong, Y.S. and Camille, D. Library fee-based information services: financial considerations Wu, M.M. see Lee, L.A.

Lawal, I.

198