SAVING THE GEOLOGY LIBRARY--A CIVICS LESSON

The Washington state geological survey library was formally established in 1935. Due to severe budget shortfalls, that library was threatened with permanent closure in 2003. That it survived shows that 'the system works'. How it survived may be a useful example to other organizations facing similar problems. Preliminary projections, released in December 2002, indicated that Washington state government faced a $2.4 billion revenue shortfall. The legislature would meet in January 2003, primarily to work on the budget for all state programs. In advance of that, the Governor's proposed budget was released in mid-December 2002. That budget opted to make up the shortfall by cutting all but the most necessary state programs. Those cuts included the Washington state geological survey library and all our state survey public information functions. Both librarians would lose their jobs, but what would become of the collection? Would the materials be given to other libraries? Would they be boxed and stored indefinitely? Would they simply be tossed? No one knew. We immediately fought back. We contacted our external users in industry, academia, and the public about our plight. We could not lobby the legislature ourselves nor could we tell our supporters what to say. However, we could and did provide our supporters with the information they requested about our situation. We prepared and distributed fact sheets and surveys. We encouraged our supporters to express their opinions to their legislators and to spread the word. Their letters came in a torrent. We heard that the letters were articulate, factual, intelligent, and much appreciated. The cynics are wrong: the system does work. Legislators do read their mail and they do take it to heart. The legislature did not fund raises for teachers and they cut many other programs. But they restored $100,000 to our budget, specifically for the library. That $100,000 restored only partial funding for us, so we scrambled to find the rest through various federal grants and other funds and are confident we will succeed. The library lives for at least two more years, when we'll probably go through this all over again.