Maryland: Frederick County Commissioners Asking Public Library to Explain Recent Book, CD, and DVD Purchases

From the Frederick News-Post:

A representative of Frederick County Public Libraries will come before the Board of County Commissioners Thursday to discuss the books, CDs and DVDs the system has acquired in the past few months. The county commissioners will also decide whether to free up funds for the next three months of library purchases.
Commissioner Billy Shreve, who has already started poring over the list of recent buys, believes some of the materials might not be worth taxpayer dollars.
“Why should my tax dollars pay for someone else’s recreation? Why should my tax dollars pay for someone to watch ‘Charlie’s Angels’ or ‘Battlestar Galactica’ or read about Lindsay Lohan?” Shreve said in a phone interview. “It’s funny looking through here, and it’s also sad, because it’s money we could be using for schools, money we could be using for our police and firefighters.”

[Clip]
The Thursday commissioners meeting will include the first periodic check-in required of library officials under a new plan. In July, when the time came to review annual county agreements with book vendors, commissioners decided to try something new: Instead of simply approving the contracts and calling it a day, they would split into installments the funding for new library materials.
More than $1 million for the year’s purchases already exists in the fiscal 2013 budget, but commissioners are releasing the funds in quarterly amounts.
Read the Complete Article
See Also: Maryland: State Library Source Questions Frederick County Library Funding Policy Change (August 2, 2012)

Filed under: Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Funding, Interviews, Libraries, News, Profiles, Public Libraries