Target Audience: Library managers from all types of libraries involved with the budget or the budgeting process
Learning Outcomes:
1. Participants will be able to educate decision makers on the effects budget reductions will have on library services.
2. Participants will be able to formulate a plan to minimize the impact of reductions and lobby successfully for it.
Library budgets are stagnant or being reduced, and administrators are faced with making hard choices of “what” and/or “whom” to cut. In the current economic climate, libraries are often targeted for reductions because everything is perceived as being “online.” An informative dialogue role-play will be presented by a director and a technical services head in a law library that suffered two recent 10 percent budget cuts, with another one in the offing. How do you deal with these budget reductions? Do you eliminate or decrease the quality of services, stop binding, buy fewer materials, or reduce staff? This program will offer a range of ideas to cope with stagnant or reduced budgets, when you already feel like you’re “down to the bone.”