Thursday, October 29, 2009

Library Budget Cuts -- how will this affect you?

The Greenfield Recorder published a story this morning announcing a budget cut to the library that will reduce our hours from 47.5 to 40 each week. How will this affect your usage of the library? Below,you can see what this cut will do to library services in Greenfield.


Greenfield Public Library

Budget cuts Fall 2009


The Greenfield Public Library has already lost 3 staff members, and 3.5 open hours this year.


We are now facing:


· losing 4 more staff people, bringing us to a staff cut of 35% in less than a year

· closing 2 evenings and 1.5 hours on Saturdays

· reducing our magazine holdings by ½

· greatly reducing reference services and online databases subscriptions

· severely reducing or eliminating children and adult programming

· increasing wait time for holds to 2+ weeks

· longer lines at check out and more noise

· not being able to repair or replace any equipment or materials

· 2 more potential rounds of budget cuts; services now being reduced could be eliminated entirely

· the possibility of losing Interlibrary Loan next year if monies taken now are not replaced in next year’s budget.

The Greenfield Public Library is a service organization; when we lose staff, we cannot provide services.

Thursday, October 08, 2009

Springfield Republican Editorial on Libraries

Take a look at this editorial from the October 7 Springfield Republican about libraries in our area. It advocates strongly supporting the region's libraries.

Here is the link: http://www.masslive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/10/regions_libraries_need_our_sup.html