With the recent closure of B. Dalton Bookseller and Waldenbooks, bookstores are becoming harder and harder to find, and readers are turning to amazon.com and other online sources to purchase books.
Students in search of “Farewell to Manzanar” and “A Separate Peace” and other required reading for schools are driving as far as San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara to purchase novels.
Those who would rather go to the library instead of driving 30 miles or paying for shipping and handling, however, are facing a problem.
With bookstores already becoming scarce, local libraries are taking a turn for the worse
as well.
With budget cuts of $14.7 million to the Public Library Foundation, the Santa Maria Public Library experienced a 6 percent cut to already limited funds from the city of Santa Maria.
To operate with such limited funds, the library is facing some tough decisions. Reducing operating costs would involve reducing staff, hours, or materials.
Patrons who can’t find a specific book at the Santa Maria branch can place a hold on
it in any other branch for a fee of 50 cents.
Recently, however, this fee has been raised to $1 per book.
While the raise in hold costs coincides with the reduced library budget, the Santa Maria Library will not be making a profit from the new fees.
“It’s more realistic to charge more than $1, but we didn’t want an additional burden placed on the public,” said Santa Maria Interim Librarian John Corbett. “It’s the best we could do to provide the service and mitigate the costs.”
The popular hold system uses a courier service to transport books among Central Coast libraries. The fee charged by the courier service, however, is paid through the hold fees from patrons and additional subsidies by the library.
The library has already dealt with reduced hours and staff. Reducing operating hours at the library from 60 to 48 per week became effective July 5, in addition to the library closing its doors every third Friday of every month due to the Mandatory Time Off program.
Even with these dire circumstances, the
Santa Maria library is coming out ahead. The Carpinteria library is expecting reduced hours from 38 to 30 per week, and Solvang from 43 hours to 30.
“Every jurisdiction is different, with different funding sources,” said Corbett. “We’re doing the best we can compared to other [libraries] who have sacrificed more.”
This article appears in Aug 11-18, 2011.
