Cash-Strapped Ohio Library Drops Out of WorldCat ILL
As part of its quest to close a $14-million shortfall for FY2010, Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Public Library has ended its participation in OCLC’s WorldCat Resource Sharing so it can close the library’s interlibrary loan department. CCPL Deputy Director Tracy Strobel told American Libraries that the action “is really no reflection on WorldCat itself or OCLC for that matter,” but of the library’s inability to continue employing ILL staff in order to fulfill requests. However, the library will continue to participate in interlibrary loan through two Ohio-based library cooperatives, with branch circulation clerks processing the requests.
In seeking cost savings, CCPL joins a score of public libraries in Ohio that are scrambling to balance their diminished budgets in the wake of a 11% cut to state aid that was approved in mid-July. Ironically, the reduction was welcomed by library advocates there as the lesser of two evils; Gov. Ted Strickland’s original plan called for slashing 30% from the Public Library Fund.
Of the ILL department’s five staff members, four are being reassigned and the department’s supervisor is retiring. Other cost savings include eliminating 41 positions, cutting acquisitions spending by $3.2 million, and ending Sunday services at all but seven branches systemwide.
Eliminating its ILL department as part of dropping WorldCat Resource Sharing will save Cuyahoga County Public Library some $500,000, according to library Communications Coordinator Robert Rua. He told AL that “it is unlikely that we will reinstate this service if the budget improves” because library officials have concluded that patrons get quicker service from the SearchOhio and OhioLINK borrowing cooperatives. The regional services provide ILL access to more than 50 million items Strobel explained, going on to acknowledge that cutbacks all over the state may well narrow the pooled resources from which Ohio library patrons can choose. “Customers in Ohio are accustomed to—and certainly deserve—a Cadillac of library services,” she said. “But we can’t continue to provide Cadillac service on 31% less funding. It’s just the reality and we have to face it.”
According to Strobel, CCPL may not be the only library making this hard choice. “Our own interlibrary loan department has seen fewer and fewer places to borrow materials from,” she revealed, noting that in 2008 CCPL loaned out through WorldCat 30% more materials than it borrowed. “As time has passed and budgets have gotten tighter, many libraries have cut back. For example, they don’t loan new materials, they don’t loan audiovisual materials, they put increasing restrictions on what they will loan out,” Strobel observed, causing her library’s outbound ILL traffic to mushroom “because of our generous policies in terms of loaning materials to other libraries across the country.”
“Administrators across the country are being forced to make difficult decisions that impact services,” agreed OCLC Marketing Vice-President Cathy De Rosa, commending CCPL as having been “a great contributor to the WorldCat Resource Sharing community.” She told American Libraries that more than 10,000 libraries in 46 countries use WorldCat Resource Sharing and that ILL requests through the service continue to grow, with more than 10 million borrowing requests processed in FY2009.
—Beverly Goldberg, American Libraries Online Posted on September 4, 2009.