Daily Thoughts 8/11/2010
Paintings of different peoples Ideal Bookshelves. http://idealbookshelf.typepad.com/
We had our order meeting today. I also read a little bit on preservation from a few websites. I am printing up the shelf talkers for tomorrow right now.
I finished reading Smart Start-Ups and Mental Health Naturally on the way to work on the train.
Things are getting rather interesting in the book trade. It seems that Amazon is now challenging Barnes and Noble with ebooks. It looks like things are very much up in the air in the book world. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/business/media/12bookstore.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&src=busln
I feel a bit perplexed. Recently there has been talk about budget shortfalls in the city of over $4.4 million dollars by the end of the year. This makes it look like we will need to be even more ready than before by the end of the year. There is talk of retirement packages. I am not sure what to make of this. People cannot collect social security until they are 66 which is a rather interesting conundrum. It is eye opening.
The math is rather interesting. We received $250,000 until the end of the year out of $400.000. This leaves 150,000 in debt leftover. If we were $400,000 in debt July of last year and did the exact same thing we would be $550,00 in debt by the same time next year. If you add in inflation of 5% to a 3.8 million dollar budget, you would need another $159,000. Add $550,000 to $159,000 and you get $709,000. I am not sure if this makes sense. Lets say the city decides to cut the library funds by 3% because of a need to save money, that would be another $100,000. I can imagine an $800,000 shortfall by next year. This would be an absolute worse case scenario.
This is why people need to find ways to save money as well as generate revenue, get more people into the building, get donations, and get grants. This is a possible truth of what we may be facing. It is also a reason to think about advocacy and other things.
On the way home, I read something a little bit different, a 55 page print out of the guidelines for a conservation/preservation grant from the New York State Board of Regents for libraries. I was reading the section on photographs. We have some interesting old photographs in our library. A number of them have been used in books. There is a box of old photographs of our library. The box of course is a greyish acid free cardboard. The photographs would make for an interesting display in our lobby. The foundation date of our library building is on November 16.
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