In exciting news for our three public library systems, New York City’s FY16 budget includes an additional $39M in funding
for library services. This significant increase will keep branch
library doors open 6 days a week throughout the boroughs and will bring
500 new jobs. The de Blasio administration has also committed to a
ten-year $300 million capital improvement budget for our libraries, a
sorely needed commitment given the steady deterioration of our libraries’ infrastructure.
The city’s FY16 budget was announced late on Monday evening by Mayor
Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. The
budget also includes a major increase in funding for the NYPD, the parks department, and the city’s public schools.
This historic increase in funding comes after a multi-faceted
advocacy campaign set forth by New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public
Library, and Queens Library. The three systems teamed up on investinlibraries.org, which includes a white paper detailing their infrastructure issues. The libraries also promoted the hashtag #investinlibraries,
held rallies around the city, created a letter-writing campaign, and
gathered testimonials by the likes of Judy Blume, Junot Diaz, and Tom
Wolfe.
Meanwhile, Urban Librarians Unite staged a 24-hour read-in on June 11 at City Hall. In his interview with Library Journal,
city council majority leader Jimmy Van Bramer called the read-in “a
steady drumbeat” that “made a compelling case that, in a city that sees
growing income disparities and has too many people falling into poverty,
unemployed, struggling, that public libraries are the first line of
defense in the war against inequality and library workers are really at
the front line.”
Read on metro.org
Two
proposals to sell and develop local library sites are wending through
the Brooklyn Public Library pipeline, and, predictably, opponents have
manned the barricades, citing the usual arguments about selling off
public land to rapacious developers.
