Foundation Asks Town to Spend Apple Chill Funds to Buy Books for Library
Column in the Chapel Hill Herald, Sunday, April 30, 2006
$87,000 Can Enrich Our Community Beyond Measure
$87,000 is a lot of money. That is how much the Town of Chapel Hill’s 2006-2007 budget will be reduced because of the Council’s decision to stop hosting Apple Chill. Our community, led by our Town Council, must now decide whether to use the $87,000 simply to reduce the budget or to help fund a valuable community resource.
But how does one choose which community service to support? Ideally, the money should be spent on a cultural resource that – like Apple Chill -- is available, free of charge, to every member of our community, no matter what their age, abilities, or differences. Secondly, the money should be spent on a need that the Town already has researched at length and committed to funding as soon as money becomes available.
We suggest that the $87,000 be used to enrich our minds, broaden our worlds, and teach our young. How can all this be accomplished with $87,000? Easily. It can be used to buy books for the Chapel Hill Public Library, as recommended in the Town’s 2003 Library Services Master Plan. The Chapel Hill Public Library currently has room for 9300 additional books – and $87,000 would buy 3,000 books!
There is no place in our town like the Chapel Hill Public Library. It is here that people of all ages, backgrounds, languages, and abilities are welcomed so they may read and learn. Babies point at pictures in big, colorful books. Toddlers learn that letters actually mean something. Newcomers to our country study books to learn English. People seeking answers to medical questions find them. Teenagers learn about the world around them. Parents study guides to learn about their teenagers. Retirees read travel books to plan their next journey.
The Chapel Hill Public Library is there for all of us, and touches all of us in different ways. But one thing is certain – we all know that when we seek to learn, to be inspired, or to be entertained – the doors of our public library are open to us.
And it is clear that we Chapel Hillians walk through those doors often. Our library is the busiest public library in the state. Each year our library has more than 265,000 visitors! And its circulation rate – at 812,000 books a year – is huge.
So the first criterion is met – purchasing books for our public library would provide a service that is available, free of charge, to everyone in our community. What about the second criterion? Has the Town Council identified this as a need worthy of funding?
The answer is yes. From 1997 to 2003, independent experts hired by the Town researched the extent to which our library was meeting the community’s needs. The experts found that: (1) the library’s print and non-print collections are much too small for a heavy-use community such as ours; and (2) the library building itself is too small to house a collection of adequate size for our community. In 2003, after considering the experts’ recommendations, the Town Council adopted a Library Master Plan. The Master Plan has three components – Building Program, Information Technology Plan, and Service Plan.
Implementation of the Building Program and the Information Technology Plan is well underway. The Information Technology Plan is almost complete and the Building Program will be funded by the $16 million library expansion bond issue approved by voters in 2003.
As of yet no money has been designated to begin funding the core issue – that is, the size of the library’s collection. The Library Services Plan calls for increasing the print and non-print collection to 4.0 collection items per capita. The library currently has 2.7 items per capita. Using 2010 population figures (when hopefully the building expansion will be complete), the library’s collection needs to expand by 68,000 additional books and non-print materials in order to reach the 4.0 goal. It will cost $2.1 million to purchase these 68,000 items. We can fit 9,300 of those items into the library’s current space, right now, today.
The Chapel Hill Public Library Foundation requested that the Town include some funding towards this goal in its 2006-2007 budget. But the proposed budget presented to the Council this past Monday night did not do so.
Our library’s annual book budget is barely within the top third of public libraries in North Carolina. This is not nearly enough to build even a small fraction of the collection goals the Town adopted in 2003.
For these reasons, we respectfully request that the $87,000 be used to broaden our worlds, enrich our minds, and fuel our community’s dedication to lifelong learning. The Chapel Hill Public Library has space to use this money now, today, to put more books in our hands. Let’s not let this opportunity slip by.
Submitted by:
The Chapel Hill Public Library Foundation
The Board of Directors of the Friends of the Chapel Hill Public Library
Bob Schreiner, Chair of the Chapel Hill Public Library Board of Trustees
