Massachusetts Legislative Information Committee

Greetings from the newly-formed ACRL/NEC Massachusetts Legislative Information
Committee!

Your help is needed to show support for the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners'
funding requests for libraries for the FY2007 State Budget. The Budget is currently being debated
in the Massachusetts Senate.

How you can get involved:

Contact members of the Massachusetts Senate to encourage their support for the funding of the
FY2007 budget lines that concern libraries.

Go to the Massachusetts Library Association's Library Legislative Action Committee site
to find out who your Massachusetts senators are and how to contact them.

The MBLC offers these tips for communicating with your elected officials:

* When contacting elected officials, it can be more effective to make phone calls or send letters
via regular mail or fax rather than send email messages.
* The simplest way to ask for help is to say, "Please support the Library Commissioners' budget
request." If you have a story that illustrates how the funding has helped you, your library,
students, etc., keep the story simple. If you know the line item in the budget, ask for their support
on line item 7000-9506, for example. As few as five different people contacting a legislator has
an impact. Ten people contacting a legislator is considered a crisis!

While more detailed information about the current status of the FY2007 state budget is included
below, here are some line items that directly impact academic libraries.

7000-9506 Library Technology & Resource Sharing Supports:

* Automated library networks, such as NOBLE and SAILS
* Regional delivery systems
* Online databases which many libraries cannot live without, $ amount per library could be
$50,000 if purchased on your own.
* State-wide resource sharing, e.g. the statewide virtual catalog, or Masscat, which smaller
libraries use to connect to each other.

7000-9501 State Aid to Public Libraries funding includes:
* Nonresident Circulation Offset, started in 1994, and it offset the costs a library incurs when it
circulates materials to residents of other Massachusetts communities

Please contact ACRL-NE State Legislative Committee Members with any questions:

Diane D'Almeida, Boston University, dalmeida@bu.edu

April Levy, Lesley University, alevy@lesley.edu

Amy Lewontin, Wentworth Institute of Technology, lewontina@wit.edu

Suzanne Wones, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
swones@ksg.harvard.edu

For more information about the current status of the FY2007 state budget, see the email message
below from Maureen Killoran of the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners:

TO: Library Community
FROM: Maureen Killoran
Date: May 17, 2006

The Senate Ways and Means FY2007 state budget recommendations
were released today. Amendments to the Senate Ways and Means
budget must be filed by Friday at 5:00 p.m. in the Senate Clerk's Office.
The House FY2007 state budget was released in April. The full Senate will begin
debating the budget on Wednesday, May 24th. Once the Senate has
completed work on the FY2007 state budget, a joint House and
Senate conference committee will be appointed to resolve the
differences in FY2007 state budgets.

Line Item 7000-9101
Administration
Board of Library Commissioners
FY 2006 - $985,720
FY2007 - House Recommended - $1,000,732
FY2007 - Senate Ways and Means Recommended - $1,000,732

Line Item 7000-9401
State Aid To Regional Libraries
FY2006 - $15,230,361
FY 2007- House Recommended - $15,730,361
FY 2007 - Senate Ways and Means Recommended - $ 15,480,361

Line Item 7000-9402
Talking Book Library
FY 2006 - $325,000
FY 2007 - House Recommended - $350,000
FY 2007 - Senate Ways and Means Recommended - $ 390,000

Line Item 7000-9406
Talking Book & Machine Lending
FY 2006 - $1,978,550
FY 2007 - House Recommended - $2,078,550
FY 2007- Senate Ways and Means Recommended - $2,182,175

Line Item 7000-9501
State Aid To Public Libraries
FY 2006 - $9,039,844
FY 2007- House Recommended - $9,289,844
FY 2007 - Senate Ways and Means Recommended - $9,343,164
House and Senate FY2007 budgets authorize MBLC to award 55
additional waivers in excess of the statutory 10 waivers of
the Municipal
Appropriation Requirement (M.A.R.)

Line Item 7000-9506
Library Technology and Resource Sharing
FY 2006 - $2,000,000
FY 2007 House Recommended - $2,039,000
FY 2007 Senate Ways and Means Recommended - $2,833,000

Line Item 7000-9507
This is a new line item. Sen. Edward Augustus of Worcester
worked with Senate Ways and Means to establish this line item
in the FY07 budget. This line item creates a matching fund incentive for
private fundraising by public libraries. This line item is
funded at $500,000 for FY07.

Maureen J. Killoran
Head of the Public Library Advisory Unit
Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners
98 North Washington St. Suite 401
Boston, Massachusetts 02114
617-725-1860
1-800-952-7403
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