Statement before the Glenn A. Walsh
Board of
Directors,
Allegheny Regional
Asset District: Telephone: 412-561-7876
ACLA Distribution Electronic
Mail: < gawalsh@andrewcarnegie.cc
>
Formula to Libraries Internet Web
Site: < http://www.andrewcarnegie.cc
>
2006 May 30
Good afternoon. I am Glenn A. Walsh of
As the attached web site page indicates,
on page 2 of the attachment, the Andrew Carnegie Free Library’s collection size
was 35,772 cataloged items in 2001, but was 22,335 in 2005. Discussing this
with Library staff and a Library Board member, I have learned that the
collection size is now 18,000, may be further reduced, and this gutting of the
Library’s collection is specifically due to the ACLA formula. Due to the
formula’s “Collection Turnover Rate” criterion, libraries with large collection
sizes are financially penalized if that library does not have a correspondingly
high circulation rate.
Although we finally convinced Carnegie Borough
officials to significantly increase Library funding in the late 1990s, subsidy
increases are very unlikely in the foreseeable future. The Borough was
devastated by the Hurricane Ivan flooding. Several buildings in the business
district have had to be demolished. The town’s anchor retail business, Izzy
Miller Furniture, is closing. Carnegie is losing their tax base. So, to just
keep the doors open to the Andrew Carnegie Free Library, the Library Board is
doing what it can to maximize RAD funding from ACLA. And, this has meant the
discarding of nearly half of the Library’s books !!!
Anecdotally, I also understand that some libraries are
buying more popular fiction, to boost their circulation and hence their RAD
funding, while their book budget for non-fiction titles is lagging.
The formula used by ACLA to distribute RAD funds to
County libraries is overly complex and seeks to
Is this the intention of the Allegheny Regional Asset
District? Is this how RAD intends to improve library service to County
residents?
If officials of any local library wished to complain
to you about this micromanagement, they dare not because of a gag-order in
their Federated Library System membership agreement*.
If they do anything that could be construed by ACLA as jeopardizing funding to
ACLA, their Federated Library System membership could be terminated. Although
this would not deny them RAD funds, it could deny them ACLA services and State
funds funneled through ACLA.
The State Department of Education provides reasonable
standards for public libraries, without trying to micromanage each library. This
micromanagement of County libraries, through the ACLA formula, must end, and
particularly the Turnover Rate criterion, which is damaging library service in
Thank you.
* Special Note: The previous was the prepared text. Following the
sentence: "If officials of any local library wished to complain to you
about this micromanagement, they dare not because of a gag-order in their
Federated Library System membership agreement." the following was added
during the verbal testimony: "--except one brave library." This addition
referred to Verne Koch, a member of the Board of Directors of the Community
Center and Library Association (which operates the Lauri Ann West
Memorial Library in O'Hara Township), who testified a few minutes earlier
before the Board of Directors of the Allegheny
Regional Asset District, regarding the unfairness of the ACLA formula.
gaw