News Report

http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/currentnews/newsarchive/2009/march2009/nyplbudgetcrisis.cfm

The three main libraries in New York City, New York Public Library, Queens Library and Brooklyn Library, are expecting major budget cuts after hearing of Mayor Bloomberg’s budget plan for the 2010 fiscal year. The plan calls for a 17% decrease in funding towards the public libraries in the city. The libraries are also expecting to lose nearly $3 million each due to a decrease in state funding. Another cause source of money that the libraries are concerned about is the money they receive from private donations. With the economy looking worse and worse, the libraries are anticipating as much as a $20 million decrease in funding from private donations. In order to deal with these severe budget cuts the NYC libraries are planning on cutting down their hours of operation in some cases to less than five days a week as well as laying off hundreds of workers.
After doing many news reports on similar subjects I have become almost immune to the shocking amounts of budget cuts in libraries across the nation. For most of my news report topics I have turned to the ALA website and it seems like the vast majority of the articles have been about the budget cuts in libraries. This article in particular is a bit more interesting because of the libraries it is dealing with. These New York libraries are so large compared to most I have read about this semester and therefore the amounts of money they will be losing is also much larger.

Kevin Petersen