Pennsylvania: Libraries Must Get Creative in Fundraising Efforts to Keep Programs

From The Patriot-News (Harrisburg, PA):

State funding to libraries [in Pennsylvania] was cut 20 percent in 2010.
“We never really recovered from that,” Dauphin County Library System spokeswoman Karen Cullings said.
These days, library funding is a patchwork quilt of endowments, grants, fundraising, state and county funds and users fees.
Fundraising occurs at all midstate libraries, said Bonnie Goble, director of the Cleve J. Fredricksen Library in Camp Hill. Goble’s library puts on a 5K race and turns the library into a miniature golf course to raise funds.
[Clip]
“[Technology] makes it very challenging,” said Jonelle Darr, executive director of the Cumberland County Library System, which allocated $20,000 for electronic books this year and then spent only $5,000 or $6,000.

Read the Complete Article

Filed under: Funding, Libraries, News, Patrons and Users