Tough Economic Times Call for More Library Cooperation: Report on a Wyoming and Colorado Alliance Conference

On April 10, 2009, the Alliance, a consortium of academic, public and special libraries in Colorado and Wyoming, convened a conference on “Cooperation: How to Thrive Despite Reduced Funding.” Drawing on the expertise of national and state leaders in the fields of education and economics, conference participants heard from two keynote speakers about the changing environment of libraries and educational institutions. Referencing these changes, then, various local librarians explored ways collaboratively to advance library resources and services. An overview of these conference presentations perhaps may help libraries and their partners in other regions of the United States and elsewhere gain insight into possible collaborative strategies that sustain library development in difficult economic times. Principles of Sustainability Jerry Perry, Library Director at the University of Colorado, Denver Health Sciences Library, set the stage for the conference by outlining some key principles of sustainability. Libraries that are to remain viable information and research centers must avoid the temptation in tough economic times to retreat into isolated silos. Rather, they need to pursue every opportunity to forge partnerships that achieve economies of scale in resource expansion. These opportunities occur in a number of areas including expanded electronic resources, greater interlibrary loan efficiencies, renegotiated consortial discounts, creative shared purchase plans, better-coordinated collaborative collection management and a sustained commitment to courier services. The Prospector network, which provides a unified catalog of holdings in 23 academic, public, and special libraries in Colorado and Wyoming with patron initiated borrowing and delivery of materials to the patron’s home library is one existing example of such collaboration within the Colorado Alliance to date. This is to say, sustainability means making the most of the resources we have— human, material and financial. Funding: The Big Picture President David Longanacker of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE)1, described the “perfect storm” bearing down upon not only libraries but public institutions and service agencies nation-wide. In a 2005 address to a “Summit” of the Colorado Academic Library Consortium (CLIC), Longanecker spoke of another perfect storm but one affecting at that time only a few states, including Colorado2. Today, the perfect storm encompasses not only the West but the nation as a whole, and it consists of three massive waves3. The first wave is of educational change. Higher education attainment is in decline not only in Colorado and Wyoming but throughout all regions of the United States. The country continues to fall behind others in educational achievement and the overarching effect is that the United States continues to lose its competitiveness on many fronts. The younger population is becoming less educated than the older population, a trend most pronounced in the nation’s Western states. Returning the country to its former standing, reaching again the 55 perCollaborative Librarianship 1(4): 151-155 (2009) 151 1 Bullington and Lee: Bullington & Lee: Tough Economic Times Call for More Library Cooperation Published by Digital Commons @ DU, 2009 Bullington & Lee: Tough Economic Times Call for More Library Cooperation centile of the population with a postsecondary degree, will take a great deal of concerted effort and significant resources. One way to help reach this goal would be to encourage an influx of educated foreigners, but the competition among other countries also wanting well-educated immigrants continues to grow. Another way is to strengthen at every governmental level social policy in support of higher education. One way or another, though, United States needs rise to the challenge to become more competitive in educational achievement. The second wave is financial. Nation-wide, the public revenue—services equation continues to trend toward increasing imbalance. Deficits expand while tax dollars shrink. It is difficult to know how this will affect budgets for higher education, but scenario will not be encouraging. While Federal stabilization funding will help over the next two years, the capacity of the Federal Government to intervene in this way beyond 2011 appears extremely limited and this source of support likely will end. Local initiatives aimed at cost reductions for higher education and libraries are that much more important. The imperative for leaders in these sectors increasingly will be for creative thinking on ways to preserve, adapt and expand services and to improve resources more economically. The third wave is tradition. The history of education in the United States shows how the country has responded to past threats and challenges in ways that have resulted in positive social change on a wide scale. One of the first such massive changes began with the signing of the “Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944,” known commonly as the “GI Bill.”4 It resulted in an enormous influx of servicemen returning after World War II into the public education system and into specialized training programs. This led to a transformation not only of the structures and capacities of post-secondary institutions, but brought about a new national prosperity. In response to other demands of society, the creation and evolution of the community college system also radically transformed education and along with it the social fabric of the United States. Now, more recently, we see another radical transformation of education as it moves more dramatically into the online environment, a change represented in the work of Carol Twigg and the National Center for Academic Transformation5. How are libraries addressing this most recent advance in education? While these three waves converge in a perfect storm, libraries and higher education in general need to see this as a time of opportunity. Its leaders need to think more radically about creating more affordable, success-focused and outcome-driven education. They need to address effectively need-based aid to students. They must advance the efficiencies and productivity of libraries and educational institutions that will improve remediation and a better transitioning for students from secondary to post-secondary institutions. In short, the perfect storm is the perfect situation in which to think, and to think again, of opportunities for collaboration. Collaboration is the best way, and perhaps the only way, to get the job done. The challenges are exceptional, but so are the opportunities. Are we up to the task? Funding: The Colorado Scene In focusing the question of funding more directly on the situation in Colorado, David Skaggs, Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education (and sixterm Member of the United States House of Representatives) addressed what likely will transpire over the next few years. As the State of Colorado grapples with an increasing loss of tax dollar revenues due to the deepening and protracted recession, cuts to higher education and to public funding of library services may be hit harder as State budgets are analyzed and trimmed even further. While government support for higher education in Colorado has improved during the tenure of Governor Ritter, the years leading up to his election were rather bleak. As late as 2006, Colorado was 8th nationally in income generation but it was an abysmal 49th in state funding for higher education and 50th in total higher education Collaborative Librarianship 1(4): 151-155 (2009) 152 2 Collaborative Librarianship, Vol. 1 [2009], Iss. 4, Art. 6 https://digitalcommons.du.edu/collaborativelibrarianship/vol1/iss4/6 DOI: https://doi.org/10.29087/2009.1.4.04 Bullington & Lee: Tough Economic Times Call for More Library Cooperation revenue (state support plus tuition). Another interesting contrast noted by Commissioner Skaggs is that Colorado ranks 4th in overall post-secondary educational attainment when accounting for adult migration into the state, but only 45th when accounting for the state’s native-born population’s post-secondary educational attainment. With a renewed commitment to higher education (but with limited ability to tap into federal stimulus money), to avoid a further decline in higher education in Colorado, the unhappy scenario will likely be a rise in tuition for State-funded colleges and universities. Colorado has faced chronic underfunding of higher education and the current economic crisis makes the situation that much more dire. As Longanecker stressed, we are challenged to rethink and re-create ourselves as library and education providers that deal effectively with these realities.