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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Monday, January 13, 2003

EDITORIAL
Library budget cutting must consider patrons

Things have come to a sorry pass when it's good news that a budget cut for the state library system will "only" be $500,000 rather than the $1 million.

State Librarian Virginia Lowell told the Board of Education that library hours will be reduced and Bookmobile services eliminated to achieve the savings ordered by the Lingle administration.

But it could have been worse, she said. The original trim was set at $1 million, but the administration agreed to scale it back after Lowell appealed. Still, $500,000 is a substantial cut out of a total budget of $23.4 million.

Lowell said she will reduce library hours to no more than 40 hours a week and trim book purchases. Bookmobile services in Kailua, Kona, Wailuku, Moloka'i and Pearl City will be discontinued. The loss of Bookmobile services to remote communities will be particularly painful. Residents there have few other options.

If the cut in hours is inevitable, our hope is that Lowell will work with individual librarians to make every one of those 40 hours count. That means making sure than some of those limited hours of accessibility are in the evenings and weekends, when working people and schoolchildren have the time to use the library.