Date: 5/25/2022
We are deeply concerned that the Huntington Selectboard and the Finance Committee have decided to put the entire fiscal year 2023 Huntington Library budget on an override question. Libraries provide critical service to communities, especially small and rural communities. This potential elimination of funding for the Huntington Library would result not only in the closing of your library but also make your residents ineligible to borrow from other public libraries including Blandford, Chester, Westfield, Westhampton, Easthampton and many others.
Service to library patrons is immeasurably enhanced by cooperative efforts among libraries willing to share their resources. The goal of mutual benefit is predicated on the assumption that every participating library will make a contribution to the collective effort. When a library fails to maintain minimum standards in collection development, staffing, and/or hours of service, then its reliance on other libraries becomes disproportionately great, and its contribution to the common good becomes disproportionately small.
In Massachusetts, the measure of whether or not a library maintains minimum standards is its participation in the certification and state aid program administered by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC). A Massachusetts library that is not a participant in the state aid program — certified either by compliance with requirements or by waiver — cannot demonstrate that it is able to reciprocate in resource sharing arrangements.
Recognizing this, the MBLC requires that libraries participating in the state aid program lend materials on a reciprocal basis, but imposes no such requirement to lend to libraries that are not participants, nor to the patrons from communities whose libraries have not been certified by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners.
Should the Huntington Library not receive certification due to disproportionate budget cuts, residents of Huntington will no longer have reciprocal library privileges in the libraries of the local communities above.
In the interest of protecting the resources purchased by the taxpayers of their communities, and as an incentive to neighboring communities to fairly fund their own libraries, we, as the board of directors of the Western Massachusetts Library Advocates (www.WMLAdvocates.org), will regretfully advise our member libraries though the four western counties of the state (Berkshire, Franklin, Hampden and Hampshire) not to extend borrowing privileges and library services, including interlibrary loan, to Huntington residents.
We will, however, encourage those libraries, as participants in the state aid program, to continue honoring their obligations to make their reading and reference rooms available to all residents of the commonwealth regardless of the certification status of their hometown libraries.
We urge you to reconsider your budget priorities and adequately fund the Huntington Public Library for FY23.
Lisa Downing
Northampton
The writer is the director of the Forbes Library and president of Western Massachusetts Library Advocates. This letter was cosigned by the directors of the Chester, Blandford, Easthampton, Westfield and Westhampton public libraries.
