As a writer and a home-schooling parent, Liz Castro knows as well as anyone just how valuable public libraries are.
Castro and her family make regular trips to tiny Belding Memorial Library, in their hometown of Ashfield; when they need a bigger selection to choose from, they head to the comparatively large Meekins Library in Williamsburg. If neither of those libraries have what they’re looking for, they request materials through the Western Massachusetts Regional Library System, which delivers books, DVDs and other materials among libraries throughout the region. As home-schoolers, Castro said, that service “is absolutely essential.”
But while Castro appreciates the cooperative agreement that allows her family access to the broader offerings of all the region’s libraries, Belding has a special spot in her heart. “[It] serves as a sort of community center,” she said. “Our library is tiny, but on a Saturday morning, there’s a ton of people coming in and out.” For some residents, it’s also the only place in town where they can connect to the wider world; as in a number of small Western Mass. communities, in Ashfield, the library is the only place many residents can access a high-speed Internet connection.
Public libraries, Castro said, are “a force for democracy. The fact that you can go to the library and get a book for free, and anybody can do it—it’s one of the foundations of our society.” Castro’s fondness for the region’s libraries even led her to create, this spring, a Facebook page called “We Love Western Massachusetts Libraries.” And she’s not alone in her ardor; as of late last week, the site had more than 2,300 fans.
But the Facebook page isn’t just a place for Castro and other members to discuss their shared fondness for libraries—it’s also become a valuable organizing tool against what they, and many others in the Valley, see as a grave threat to the regional library system. In response to dramatic cuts in state funding for libraries, the Western Mass. Regional Library System—the Whately-based entity that supports and connects 316 libraries spread over 2,800 square miles in the four western counties—stands to be consolidated into a new, statewide library system, located in eastern Mass.
In the process, supporters fear, services to patrons will suffer, library staff will lose the crucial support they now receive from WMRLS, and the specific needs and culture of Western Mass. libraries— especially the smallest, most understaffed and underfunded libraries—will get lost in a large system more geared to the needs of libraries in the bigger communities of the eastern part of the state.
Regionalization can be a good strategy, said Castro, if it allows communities with similar needs to create some economies of scale. But a statewide system would be too big and diverse, she said. “The Boston library doesn’t have the same needs as our Ashfield library, so any efficiency that may have been gained is already lost. … And the support that libraries need out here, and have gotten for the last 50 years from WMRLS—it just won’t be there anymore.”
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Massachusetts’ libraries have been particularly hard hit by the state budget crisis of recent years: state aid to municipal libraries has dropped from $10 million in fiscal 2009, to $6.8 million this year. Aid to regional library systems—which includes the Western Mass. Regional Library System and five others in the eastern part of the state—dropped from $17 million in 2009 to $12.3 million in 2010, then to $8.7 million in the 2011 budgets proposed by Gov. Deval Patrick and the House Ways and Means Committee.
Libraries, supporters like to point out, are expert at making do with less. But the recent cuts to the regional systems—a 50 percent reduction in just two years’ time—have presented an especially daunting challenge. Last fall, the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, a governor-appointed body that oversees library services throughout the state, began working on a plan to absorb those cuts. On April 15, the Board released that plan, which has generated great controversy, especially in Western Mass.
Under the plan, the existing six regional library systems will be consolidated into one entity, called the Massachusetts Library System, or MLS, effective July 1. The MBLC’s nine members (all of whom come from the eastern part of the state) unanimously approved the plan, citing the need to cut costs through administrative streamlining.
In an announcement of the plan, MBLC Chairman George Comeau acknowledged the unhappiness the consolidation would cause: “This is by far the most difficult decision we have to make in this round of budget cuts. The Commission has heard from patrons and library professionals from every corner of Massachusetts, and yet, the decline in the budget is so precipitous that today’s action is necessary to insure that basic and core services are maintained to every city and town in the Commonwealth. Our thoughts are with the people who will lose their positions as a result of this change.”
The MBLC is working hard to reassure librarians and patrons that the services now offered by the regional systems—which include delivery of interlibrary loan materials, training and continuing ed courses for library staff, and technical support—will be maintained as much as possible. While the dramatic cuts in state funding will necessitate some cuts—fewer staff members, fewer training classes—the board will look closely at attendance figures and other measures to ensure that the most-used services will continue to be offered, Robert Maier, director of the MBLC, told the Advocate.
“That’s really what’s driving the process, a dedication that we all share to providing the core services that libraries rely on every day, and providing them, really, on the same basis that they have been provided,” Maier said.
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But those reassurances offer little comfort to local library staff and supporters, who already see worrisome signs that the consolidated system will have a decidedly eastern Mass. feel, at the expense of the unique needs in the western part of the state.
While in the coming fiscal year, MLS will operate out of two existing sites—the WMRLS building in Whately and the Metrowest Region headquarters in Waltham—a transition planning committee report calls for the new, consolidated system to find a permanent home “in leased space in the MassPike/495/128 corridor.” (The report does say that trainings and meeting will be held at spots around the state, and promises that “[t]he organization and its staff will be nimble, providing training and advisory services at the local level throughout the Commonwealth.”) Meanwhile, of the 15 members of the new MLS board, only two—Betty Johnson, director of Colrain’s Griswold Memorial Library, and Eric Poulin of Greenfield Community College’s library—are from Western Mass.
At a meeting of the MBLC, held two weeks before the board voted to accept the consolidation plan, Christopher Lindquist, director of the Westfield Athenaeum, urged members to reject the proposal. “I think it is the height of irony that we are sitting here on April 1st because I feel very strongly that collectively, we will all be fools if we accept the proposal to consolidate the six regional library systems into one entity at one location,” he said.
Lindquist suggested that adequate savings could be found through a less dramatic consolidation plan, one that reduced the number of regional systems from six to three: east, central and west. “It strains credulity to think that geographical considerations did not carry greater weight in the [transition team’s] deliberations,” he said. Pointing to the geographic spread of Massachusetts’ communities—”with libraries located in the hinterlands of the Berkshires as well as on the Cape and Islands”—Lindquist called a single, centralized system “irresponsible,” and predicted it would fail to serve many libraries, “including some of the smallest and most needy libraries in the hilltowns of western Massachusetts.”
That’s a concern voiced by many out here. Some of the anxiety, perhaps, can be traced back to a general—and generally not off-the-mark—belief that the needs and wishes of electorate-dense eastern Mass. matter more to decision-makers at the state level than the needs of our comparatively powerless region. Nonetheless, local librarians point to very specific needs unique to small-town libraries, of which the western counties have plenty: there are 348 public libraries in Massachusetts, and of the 90 smallest, 81 are located in Western Mass. (The Cape and Islands account for most of the others.)
At the WMRLS office in Whately, the staff is living with a lot of unanswered questions about their futures. Regional Administrator John Ramsay told the Advocate that he expects that about half of the 18 full- and part-timers who currently work for WMRLS will lose their jobs under the consolidation plan, although he hopes some will find positions as trainers or advisors under the new system. WMRLS’ eight delivery drivers will keep their jobs for now, although it remains to see what will happen in fiscal 2012.
While Ramsay spoke appreciatively of the efforts made by local legislators to protect WMRSL, he emphasized that he has not been involved in drafting those proposals or lobbying for support. “We just want to be involved in providing good service,” he said.
Ramsay said he understands the financial pressures that led to the consolidation plan. “A real effort is being made to do as much as can be done with severe budget cuts,” he said. “People just want to make sure that libraries in Western Mass., who rely on services so heavily, will continue to be part of the picture.”
Ramsay hears the anxieties expressed by WMRLS’ member libraries: fears that smaller facilities with limited hours will not be accommodated if the current, local delivery system is replaced by state-wide delivery; worries that library staff who rely on the prompt technical support now provided by WMRLS won’t see the same responsiveness from a consolidated system. “People are nervous, when [the plan] said the hub will be in eastern Massachusetts, that that means services will not be available to them out here,” he said.
WRMLS is the only regional system that owns the building in which it’s housed, Ramsay noted. “Our building has become sort of a symbol of regional presence,” he said. “We’re sort of caught up in the fabric of western Massachusetts. People have seen our trucks on the road for about 50 years.”
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Lisa Wenner is director of Williamsburg’s Meekins Library. While Meekins might seem small compared to some local libraries, such as Northampton’s Forbes or the Central Library in Springfield, it’s a Gulliver alongside such Lilliputian, and lovely, facilities such as the public libraries in Peru (population 823), Chesterfield (pop. 974) and Monterey (pop. 934).
“These libraries are really located in the hearts of their small villages and small towns,” Wenner said. And, in many small communities, they’re the only place in town where residents can get broadband access to the Internet. When Wenner opens up Meekins for the day, she says, she often sees people sitting with their laptops on benches outside the library—or in their cars, if it’s cold or rainy—taking advantage of its wi-fi.
Valley library patrons also rely heavily on the interlibrary delivery system run by WMRLS; in 2009, it handled 1.8 million items. That service is especially valuable to smaller libraries, allowing them to offer their patrons access a wide range of materials, Wenner noted. The five regional systems in eastern Mass. all contract with private companies to handle their interlibrary deliveries. But when WMRLS sought bids from private delivery services a few years ago, it found in the end that it was more cost effective to use its own staff, who sort materials at the Whately headquarters and then deliver them in WMRLS-owned trucks.
For the coming fiscal year, at least, WMRLS staff will continue to handle local deliveries. Maier told the Advocate that one of the tasks of the new Massachusetts Library System will be to determine whether it would make financial sense to privately contract all delivery services under the consolidated system, or to leave the Western Mass. delivery service as is.
Wenner and other librarians worry that if the delivery system is handed off to a private courier service, its quality will suffer. They also worry that if the service is privatized, the smallest libraries could be deemed too costly to include and dropped from the system. (Maier insists that regardless of how deliveries are handled in the future, no library will be dropped from the system. “That’s a commitment made to the very smallest libraries and to the very largest libraries in the system, because it is so crucial,” he said.)
It’s not just patrons who benefit from the regional system, Wenner said. WMRLS also offers librarians professional training and technical support, which is especially important to staff at the smallest libraries. Many small libraries have only one paid staff member, and the vast majority of those staffers—91 percent, according to Wenner—don’t have professional degrees in the field. That makes them especially reliant on the staff in Whately.
“WMRLS really makes librarians,” Wenner said. When she first started working at Meekins 25 years ago, she said, “I couldn’t say I was a librarian.” But with both the formal instruction and informal support offered by WMRLS, she developed the necessary skills.
“It really creates a professional network that wouldn’t be here otherwise,” Wenner said. With the large number of small, far-flung libraries in Western Mass., “isolation is a big problem. WMRLS is the big stopgap before finding yourselves totally isolated. [You feel] like you have a contact, and you’re part of a library family,” she said.
With one consolidated entity, located in eastern Mass., librarians from the west fear they’ll lose that local support, and have to drive across the state to attend classes and other programs they now get close to home. “The consolidation of library services in the eastern part of the state feels devastating to those of us who work here in the west,” Wenner added. “It’s not that people don’t support the idea of streamlining and saving money. … I don’t think there’s anyone who works in a small library who doesn’t know how to save money. But what library directors here, especially in small libraries, are asking is to be part of the conversation.”
To make that point, 142 librarians from public and academic libraries across Western Mass. recently sent a letter to the governor, the Legislature and the MBLC calling for WMRLS to be left intact. “Any good statewide plan must reflect the library needs of the whole state; however, those needs are not all the same,” the letter read. “While readers all over the state may want many of the same books and media, the delivery of these and other important library services should not be provided on a ‘one-size-fits-all’ basis. Good planning demands that all constituent groups provide real input and that the realities of geography vs. population be taken into consideration in any subsequent plan.”
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The MBLC is very aware of the special needs of the western libraries, Maier told the Advocate.
“We get it,” he said. The board’s current lack of any members from Western Mass. is a “weakness,” he acknowledged. But board members (whom, Maier noted, as appointed by the governor) serve in an at-large capacity, with no one member representing any particular region. “We at the Board of Library Commissioners cover the entire state,” he said. “We’re pretty conversant with these issues. &
“Having said that, I fully understand the concerns that are driven by the sense that Boston doesn’t get it”—a concern, Maier added, that’s often expressed by residents of Cape Cod, too.
The library consolidation plan, Maier said, was the result of a long process that included input from the six regional systems. While various scenarios were considered—including the three-region system that Lindquist, the Westfield library director, called for at the April 1 meeting— “what emerged in the initial planning [was] an interest in a single system that will serve all libraries in the commonwealth,” Maier said. “I certainly think it’s the case that a single system provides the greatest administrative savings of any other approach.” That approach, he emphasized, will not favor some libraries over others.
But that doesn’t mean that there won’t be changes, including reductions in some services. For instance, while the MLS will take over the professional development courses now offered by the regional systems, with less money in the budget there will be fewer classes and less staff, Maier said. The MBLC, he added, is currently reviewing statistics about previous programs—where they were held, how many people attended—with an eye to making sure the MLS continues to offer them where they’re needed, “to be really careful that the new system is providing a reasonable number of training opportunities in each part of the state.”
And while existing WMRLS staff will continue to handle interlibrary book deliveries in the coming fiscal year, the MBLC will consider whether that’s the smartest approach financially going forward. “No one is saying there’s something wrong with how the delivery is being done [in Western Mass.],” Maier said; still, the Board wants to look into whether it would be more cost effective to privately contract delivery here, perhaps under one larger contract that covers the entire state. “That’s a questions that we’re asking—it’s not an answer that we’re giving,” Maier added.
The MBLC will seek bids from private contractors this summer, and compare those costs with the cost of the existing WRMLS system. Maier said a final decision is six to nine months away.
The MLS will take over existing youth programs, such as the popular summer reading program (last year, 100,000 kids across the state participated). It will also provide technical assistance to libraries, including the Internet support so many Western Mass. communities rely on, Maier said. A cost-saving co-operative materials-buying program run by WRMLS but open to any library in the state will continue to be run out of the Whately site, he said.
The April 15 press release announcing the MBLC vote on the consolidation plan acknowledged the geographic concerns it raises: “Several Board members commented on the sense conveyed in the [transition planning] report that the permanent hub of the new system be located in the 128 to 495 area along the Massachusetts Turnpike,” the release said. “They voiced concern that MLS not move too quickly to select office locations, and to fully understand the impact of site decisions on the provision of services across the Commonwealth before making changes.
“The MBLC will take an active role in managing the timeline, sites for services and the means by which services are located to insure that population and geographic needs are met.”
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There’s a simple way to ensure those needs are met, said state Rep. John Scibak—by leaving the Western Mass. Regional Library System in place.
During the recent House budget debates, Scibak (D-South Hadley) sponsored an amendment that called for the MBLC to fund at least two regional library systems, one in eastern Mass., and another in Western Mass., based in Whately. Scibak’s amendment—which was co-sponsored by 15 other legislators from the four western counties—made it into the final House consolidated budget amendment, although stripped of language requiring the Western Mass. site be in Whately. Scibak’s amendment was also potentially weakened by another amendment, from state Rep. Mark Falzone (D-Saugus), that called for a study by the legislature’s Library Caucus of the costs and benefits of changes in regional library systems.
Several proposed amendments to increase funding for libraries did not make it into the final House budget.
Even without the additional funding, Scibak believes the state can afford two regional systems; why should a 30 percent cut in the MBLC’s budget necessitate an 83 percent cut—from six to one—in regional library systems? he asked.
“It’s absolutely critical for those [western] libraries, those librarians, to be able to access training and resources through the regional system,” Scibak said. And, he added, while the consolidation plan calls for leasing a new site in eastern Mass., WMRLS already owns its Whately building, which is only a few years old and has a modern computer lab, free parking and other amenities.
Indeed, Scibak said, “If the Board of Library Commissioners feels we can only afford one regional library system … why not have it in Western Mass.?” Because, he offered in response to his own question, that would be considered too inconvenient for people from eastern Mass.
Scibak sees a large disconnect between library policy-makers in the east and the libraries they affect out here—a disconnect made worse by the lack of a Western Mass. voice on the MBLC. “I’m concerned that there’s not in eastern Massachusetts a full appreciation of the role of libraries in Western Massachusetts,” he said.
Maier, the MBLC director, questions whether Scibak’s amendment calling for the maintenance of a western regional system makes sense, given that the House budget did not include an increase in library funding. “In a dramatically underfunded budget, which this is, can a separate western region actually fulfill the mandate to provide services to the western part of the state?” he asked. In his opinion, Maier said, it wouldn’t be able to provide services as well as one consolidated system could.
Scibak, however, challenges the assumption that a western system would be “vastly underfunded.” Regional library systems are guaranteed funding under state law, he noted, and the funding schedule actually favors regions with smaller populations, granting them more money per capita. In fiscal 2010, WMRLS received almost $1.6 million under that formula.
While Scibak’s House amendment was cheered by Western Mass. library supporters, it’s not the final word on the fate of WMRLS. The Senate will begin its own budget process this month, and Patrick also needs to sign off on a final state budget. Advocates like Castro now turn their sights to the Senate, looking both for support for WMRLS and for increased funding for libraries overall.
“I’m so tired of them calling it a ‘discretionary item,'” Castro said. “It is not discretionary—it’s absolutely essential.”
“It’s really time for people to speak up and say this [consolidation plan] is happening too quickly,” added Wenner, the Williamsburg librarian. “There really hasn’t been time to think through a good working [plan] for all the state. All libraries are not equal.”
