By 
Library patrons who enjoy summer reading programs, access to research databases, genealogy data through ancestry.com and the ability to check out books from neighboring libraries could lose those services.
That’s if Gov. Kristi Noem’s proposal to slash funding to the state library comes to be.
Noem pitched some $70 million in cuts during her budget address earlier this month. Among them is $1 million in state funding for the South Dakota State Library. That would also mean the loss of $1.4 million in federal funding, and the elimination of 12.5 jobs, according to the proposed budget, library officials say.
That has them working to counteract the plan before the budget is finalized at the end of next year’s legislative session.
Elizabeth Fox, president of the South Dakota Library Association, said she’s hoping to convince legislators to walk back that decision because it would gut services offered by the state library.
The library association is familiar with the services provided by the state library, but is not part of its day-to-day operations. The state librarian, senior librarian and seven others who handle the braille and talking books programs would remain even with the cut. Fox said. Others, though, would be gone.
“The state library is being extremely reduced,” she said.
While a relatively small office compared to many state departments, librarians in the Aberdeen area speak highly of the benefits of the state library and are worried about what could be lost.
Robert Russell, library director at Northern State University’s Beulah Williams Library, said libraries across South Dakota benefit from the state library. That includes university libraries, community libraries and high school and elementary school libraries.
“The impact on the small town and school libraries will be immense,” Russell said. “That’s the biggest point here.”
Small libraries rely on state library
Redfield Carnegie Library Director Sarah Jones Lutter said smaller rural libraries rely on many resources offered by the state library. The efficiency of the interlibrary loan program is one example, she said. With it, she has access to a database containing catalog information for libraries across the state.
If a patron is interested in a book Redfield doesn’t have, Lutter said, the database allows her to easily request that book from another library.
Many libraries also send and receive books through interlibrary loan using a courier service that picks up and drops off requested books.
“That will be cut,” Lutter said.
Fox confirmed that courier service would go away as would an electronic system with which libraries request materials for interlibrary loans.
Another loss would be the database used to find materials at other libraries, she said.
That means she’d spend more time searching individual catalogs to find materials for patrons and, without a courier service, all of those items would be sent by mail, another financial hit for libraries.
So far this year, libraries in South Dakota have requested 33,900 items through the interlibrary loan program and have processed requests for 37,147 items, according to data from the state library.
Aberdeen library sends, receives 200 items each month
K.O. Lee Aberdeen Public Library Director Anna Moser said at least 100 items arrive at the Aberdeen library each month from other libraries. Another 100 items are sent out monthly. Those items are regularly picked up and dropped off by the courier service, she said.
“We have a limited budget, Moser said. “We can’t buy every book. This allows us to get those books to our patrons and vice versa.”
She said people who are part of Hutterite communities and families who homeschool their children benefit significantly from interlibrary loaning.
“It’s just incredibly helpful, and it helps us focus our book budget elsewhere,” she said.
Lutter estimated the cost to mail one book at $5. The extra expense would mean libraries would have to consider whether to lend materials to other libraries, Fox said.
Having to bear that burden could also lead to conversations about shifting that cost to the patrons who ask for the materials, Lutter said. That, however, runs contrary to the idea of libraries, which aim to be a free and accessible place for everyone, regardless of economic status.
Russell said losing services for patrons would be a tremendous loss. And the courier service, for instance, was just established in recent years.
“For all of us, if that is in any way diminished or gone, our student access to other universities is diminished,” he said.
Russell said having services like interlibrary loaning makes libraries feel like they aren’t an island by themselves because they have access to so many extra resources. They also help the state’s smallest libraries meet the needs of patrons, he said.
He hosts the Library Institute each year at which training is provided to smaller libraries because of how remote they can be.
“The lynchpin in all of this was the state library,” Russell said. “What happens in Faith and Bison now?”
If finances are cut and services disappear, his prediction is that small, rural libraries will close because of their diminished functionality.
“It’s very bleak. There is not a positive that I see in this,” Russell said.
Summer reading program materials, training would disappear
Summer reading programs would also take a hit because materials could not be distributed across the state, Lutter said. Those items are obtained by the state library, she said, which also organizes the necessary training.
“They do it for free, and the past three years we worked and provided the training for other area libraries. If that goes away, however are we going to do it?” Lutter said.
It would mean more work for a small staff that would need to develop its own summer reading programs, she said.
Moser said those resources are huge for Aberdeen, as is the training for the programming that’s available each year.
“Without that we wouldn’t have the training, and we wouldn’t have access to the images,” she said referring to promotional materials for summer reading programs.
Moser’s worried about the potential loss of ReadSquared, a program patrons use to log their reading times for the summer program.
“It’s now entirely online, and we don’t pay for that. It’s through the state library,” she said. “We don’t know what we would do without ReadSquared.”
Moser predicts the loss of a host of services currently available through the state library. The result would be both large and small libraries scrambling to see how they could fill the void, she said.
“The state library is amazing,” Lutter said. “They are so helpful. Trying to picture a world where they’re not there, it would hurt us and the people of Redfield.”
Fox said if the summer reading program resources go away, smaller libraries will likely go without since they don’t have the resources to obtain the materials or the personnel to craft the programming.
Research, genealogy resources could go away
Trimming the state library budget would also mean losing access to databases, some of which are used by students for research, Lutter said.
Those fond of using ancestry.com for genealogy research would have to get their own subscriptions, Fox said, though some resources like Proquest — a research database — would remain.
Aberdeen social studies and speech teacher Kerry Konda, who is also the coach of the Central High School debate team, said the resources available through the state library are critical for students to research class assignments and craft debate arguments.
His students use ProQuest, he said, but also SIRS Issue Researcher and databases that provide access to newspaper articles that aren’t behind a paywall, which could disappear.
While the internet is full of information, the databases provide high-quality content and access to peer-reviewed journals, Konda said.
“We have been training kids to use these so they know how to use them in college,” he said.
Fox said the databases have functions that make it easier to fine-tune the information sought or search for recent developments on a particular topic.
Konda’s students tap the interlibrary loan program, he said, and he uses the video streaming service SWANK to show educational movies in class.
“You can’t tell me (there’s a) benefit of cutting this,” he said.
Russell said those resources are a conduit of information for people. Conversations are already starting about how to maintain access to some of the resources, but each one comes at a cost, he said.
Lutter said the number of things the state library does is remarkable given its budget.
“And it directly impacts what I do as a librarian every day,” she said.
