voice of bainbridge

Public libraries stories in California and in New York

California Governor Jerry Brown plans to cut all state funding for the public libraries while in Los Angeles the city funding has also been cut. In New York City budget cuts were limited thanks to a Keep the library open campaign that rallied people in support. A few messages from the New York clip: Don't be afraid to raise your voice (please join me), 'I would be lost without the library" (Barbara Walters), 'Library is what makes a community a community" (Nora Ephron). But at the end of 2010 they are back in trouble (look also at the comment at the end).

Geek the library

Geek the library is an e-campaign created by the Gates Foundation to raise the awareness about the problems facing public libraries. It does not help us much except in encouraging "us" to get involved in supporting our public libraries. How is the present KRL leadership willing to have "us" involved? As for now they look extremely distant. 

Public Library: It could be worse

Like in Gloucestshire according to The Guardian. That's no reason not to assess carefully how best to manage our own situation.

The Bainbridge Public Library beyond KRL

The Bainbridge Public Library is the name of the community non-profit that owns and operates the building as it does not belong to KRL. Bainbridge Island Friends of the Library is another local community group that supports the library by raising funds via booksales. Both groups demonstrate the crucial contribution of our local community to the very existence and functioning of the library.

A closer look at how each district voted about the levy: why should Bainbridge be forced to follow the choice of the other districts?

While commenting about the decision to close the library on sundays, KRL President Gail Mathison is quoted as saying; 'it sort of evens the playing field", sort of putting all libraries on the same reduced service. But what Gail Mathison (who represents South Kitsap) does not seem to take into consideration is that only two places Bainbridge and Poulsbo supported the levy. This decision intends to align all libraries to the least level of service. Obviously (and unfortunately) a majority of the people in South Kitsap, Central Kitsap and North Kitsap did not care enough about the libraries to support the levy: therefore they probably should not care to see their libraries closed on sundays. That's not the case for Bainbridge and our community that already owns the building and raises substantial amounts of extra money (via Friends of the Library and probably KRL) could very probably raise the extra funding necessary to keep the library open on sundays. As we write the KRl leadership does not see open to this solution but why should Bainbridge that was ready and willing to increase the levy support the consequences of the vote in the other districts?

Another remark is that considering the number of people who voted YES, KRL could raise enough money in each district to keep the level of service by convincing them to voluntarily give. 

How many KRL cardmembers?

Jeff Brody, Director of Community Relations for KRL emails me that there are about 110,000 active KRL card holders not about 200.000 as I extrapolated from the number Peter Raffa had told me (191,286).

I certainly want to use the most relevant number. If there are 110,000 card holders, the 1800 donators would represent less than 2%.

I had not realized the Kitsap Sun had advised to to vote NO on the levy. Reading their opinion (mostly there was too much planned for new buildings) and the comments is interesting and raises some questions about what should be funded or not.

Looking at KRL prospective budget for 2011

Here is the narrative (pdf format) and here is the 2011 draft budget.

An interesting comparison is with the Spokane County Library District although their libraries are closed on saturday and sunday but open the rest of the week from 8 to 4.30 (not a schedule that would work for us). Other main difference, they passed the levy as did many other counties (something I had no idea about).

Here an article about the levy. Not that people seemed very motivated to talk about it but they were ready to vote for it.

Precinct canvass report: who voted for/against the KRL levy

The precinct canvass report gives a much more detailed view of who supported/or not the library levy. It would be interesting to have the data in visual/google map like format. I some areas there is a strong support for the public library, in others less so: that could lead to increased differences as some communities appear more willing to invest than others. in fact only Bainbridge and Poulsbo (by a small margin) voted in favor of the levy. It is also interesting to look again at the result of the May 2007 ballot where the levy was defeated while the participation was much lower (42,67%) but the percentages similar: 45,55% for the Yes and 54,45% for the No.

It takes one to make a million. The lesson of AAA for KRL

AAA Washington hits the million-member mark: in their Journey magazine Erik Lucas explains how the organization slowly built its membership. That reminds me of the challenge ahead for Kitsap Regional Library: how can KRL turn its almost 200K car holders into voluntarily pledging members? As for now, the KRL Foundation has about 1800 contributing donors (1% of the cardholders) that gave about $120K in 2010. I do not include one legacy (of $120K) and one 25K grant from the Walmart Foundation. The challenge -as I see it- is to get most of the cardmembers (not 1%) to pledge and donate at least $10 per year for a fundraising goal of $2 million. If you are interested by this challenge and helping to make it happen, let me know: I think it is up to us/you, the "average" card-holders to take the initiative and the responsibility to try to make it happen. Thank you in advance.