Utah Libraries » government grants

Wastebook 2010: A Fun Look at Government Spending

Ray Matthews — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 00:39:01 +0000

Wastebook 2010

The award for the most entertaining government publication of the Year has to go to Senator Tom Coburn’s Wastebook 2010. It’s a guide to the 100 most wasteful federal spending projects of the year. Coburn, known as a champion of fiscal responsibility in his opposition to earmarks and unchecked government spending, identifies $11.5 billion worth of wasteful spending. The reports gives each target a humorous and engaging title such as “Carrousel Museum Takes Taxpayers for a Spin” and “Federal Study Investigates Cow Burps.”

Unnecessary office printing costs taxpayers $930 million in waste each year.

Wasteful Printing

The Department of Defense (DOD) spends $1.4 billion on office printing, 34% of which, according to the 2009 Lexmark Government Printing Report, is unnecessary. The average federal employee costs their agency an average of $500 each year in office printing. This doesn’t even factor in the negative environmental impacts of the 6.5 billion pages of paper consumed annually.

The printing of government publications by the Government Printing Office also takes a big hit. In an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America, Sen. Coburn questioned the purpose of printing the federal budget, asking, “How many people actually read the printed budget of the President, the printed one? One, maybe two?”

While many state and local governments and federal agencies are now printing their publications digitally, Congress itself still hasn’t figured it out. The Congressional Record has been online for fifteen years yet it is still printed in paper at an annual cost of $25.25 million. ABC News’ Jonathan Karl says that about the only thing that the 4,551 daily copies are used for these days, “is filling up recycling bins on Capitol Hill.” Coburn shakes his said saying, “It’s all online.” Why are we still printing it? His answer: “Because we’re inept.”

Okay, blame it on librarians. Both the Congressional Record and the Budget of the United States Government are on the Government Printing Office’s Essential Titles List which mandates the need for certain publications be sent to depository libraries in paper or other tangible formats. The American Association of Law Librarians (AALL) supports their continued printing and paper distribution because they are “core documents of our democracy” and because the Library of Congress only recognizes paper or microfiche as archival formats.

Squeaks

GPO is also dinged for its pricing of a comic book about a Superhero Mouse that teaches children “why printing is important.” Anticipating high demand, GPO printed 5,500 copies but priced them to sell at $5.70 less than the cost to produce. GPO calls the loss a marketing expense. Coburn says that taxpayers, “who footed the bill for the project — might have another name for it.”

An agency video publication, “Snapshot of America” produced by the U.S. Census Bureau cost taypayers $2.5 million to run as an advertisement during last year’s Super Bowl. It tanked. Media critics gave it the lowest score as the worst of all the Super Bowl commercials. This was only one of many publishing projects in a $133 million campaign to educate Americans about participating in the census enumeration. To Coburn’s chagrin, “none of these strategies appears to have produced an increase in census returns.”

The Wastebook cites at No. 4 in the report a $615,000 prestigious National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to the University of California Santa Cruz. This grant, one of 51 awarded by IMLS, is to develop a groovy, innovative, “socially constructed” archiving system to digitize photographs, flyers, T-shirts, and concert tickets belonging to the Grateful Dead. The report notes the net worth of the Jerry Garcia estate and Phil Lesh at roughly $40 and $35 million respectively and wonders why taxpayer funding for libraries is footing the bill to archive the band’s memorabilia?

My personal favorites of waste are the “Study of Why Political Candidates Make Vague Statements” (cost $216,884), “Study of Why Americans Voted in the Election” (cost $2.3 million), and the “Office for Retired Speakers of the House of Representatives” (cost $440,955).

Following Dr. Coburn’s prescriptions (he is an obstetrician), governments can save real money.

Accreditation Report

Let me give an example. Before we went digital, Georgia Loutensock at the Utah Office of Education sent 19 copies of every School Accreditation Report to the State Library for distribution to depository libraries. Now that she sends only digital copies to the Digital Library, her agency has cut their annual printing costs by between $1,000 and $1,200 or by 80%. Multiply that savings by the average 10,000 publications that we receive yearly, and the digital library is saving agencies of state government over $10 million each year in printing costs!

I’m hoping that the Wastebook will become an annual New Year’s tradition. It provides a wake-up call reminding the country of our need to trim the “wasteline.”

So, how much did Coburn’s report cost to print?

“Zero,” his spokesman John Hart tells Reuters. “We didn’t make a single printed copy. There’s something called the Internet.” Doh!

The Senator could have spent a few bucks, though, to hire a proofreader. It’s missing eight pages of its table of contents.

-rm

Sources:



Coburn, Tom (December 2010). Wastebook 2010: A guide to some of the most wasteful government spending of 2010. [PDF]
Karl, Jonathan and Deen, Auzzie (20 Dec 2010). Most wasteful government programs of 2010. Senator Tom Coburn drafted a "Wastebook" guide to the most wasteful government spending. ABC News.
U.S. Government Printing Office. (2009). Budget justification : fiscal year 2010.. [PDF; See E-1]

My Professional Excellence Grant Experience, June 2009

admin — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:56:30 +0000

By Joanne Gialelis, Library Assistant II, Utah State Law Library

The Utah State Library Division’s UPLIFT Professional Excellence Grant provided me with an excellent opportunity. With this grant award, I was able to pay for a Collection Management course and apply the credits towards my graduate degree program at SJSU’s School of Library and Information Science. This course showed me how collections are built and changed over time. There was much discussion of the obstacles and challenges faced when trying to build and maintain a strong, relevant collection. These obstacles include censorship challenges, copyright issues and the increasing annual costs of books, videos, and periodicals.

I had the opportunity to learn about item selection tools that relate to my work in a public law library. I also learned about materials selection in subjects I don’t see in my day to day work, including entrepreneurship, home ownership, and stock investment books. The most challenging assignment was putting together an Opening Day Collection using a predetermined budget. This forced me to choose a few titles among so many available while trying to keep a variety of viewpoints.

The most valuable lesson taken from this course was that networking will be an important part of managing a library collection. Whether being active in a library association, talking to cultural or business leaders, or keeping in touch with teachers or faculty, librarians don’t work in isolation to provide the best collections and services. I learned a lot from my classmates (including two fellow Utah students) how different types of libraries face challenges such as budget crises and shared with other libraries. The class was a valuable experience that will have lasting impact on my emerging professional career.

Stimulus $$$ and Utah libraries

Colleen Eggett — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:00:17 +0000

Everyone’s wondering about stimulus money and how Utah librarians can get it. Here’s my answer, and that’s just it, my answer. The thing is, we don’t want to miss out. Deseret News said that Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County will get most of the money. I don’t want it to slip by the rest of us.

The website to track is http://recovery.utah.gov/. It shows $ coming to Utah, $ being spent, and on what.

There is the Guide to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for Utah. Take a look at that.

Emily Sheketoff of ALA tells how libraries can benefit and what to do. Remember when she came to Utah for ULA/MPLA in 2008? She said recently:

Specific provisions libraries can benefit from in the stimulus include $13 billion for Title I, $650 million for Enhancing Education Through Technology, $7.2 billion for Broadband, $53.6 billion for the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, an additional $120 million for the Senior Community Service Employment Program, an additional $130 million for the Rural Community Facilities Program, and $4.24 billion and $1.33 billion for Military Libraries to try to access. ALA has posted information on how these provisions can benefit libraries.

Here are ways that Utah libraries can use the money.

Broadband. This is the biggest fund for libraries. There is $7.2 billion set aside nationally: $4.5 billion for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and $2.5 billion for the Rural Utilities Service (RUS), which includes $200 million set aside for community computing centers, including public libraries and community colleges.

Enhancing Education Through Technology. The school librarian could use this money for computers in the library, databases, etc. The goal is to help all students become technologically literate by the end of the eighth grade.

Title 1: Title I schools (usually lower income) have extra money coming in to close the achievement gap. The funding is flexible and, for the most part, the control rests in the hands of local and state superintendents–and spending some of it on school libraries would be a wise investment, ALA asserts.” (Maya Prabhu of ALA). Utah Title 1 school librarians should contact their local school officials and get the ball rolling.

State Fiscal Stabilization Fund. Governor Huntsman will decide how to spend this and school libraries should be the ones to benefit if we band together. The ARRA directs governors to use 81.8 percent of the state’s allocation to support elementary, secondary and higher education. This funding is flexible so school librarians should make their case and get into this pot of money.

The Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP) works with eligible seniors to gain job training and employment. It does not specifically apply to work in libraries, although library work would definitely be a legitimate application of the program. Utah has an ongoing SCSEP program and received additional funding under the stimulus bill. Libraries could recruit seniors to work for them under this program. SCSEP pays their wages, not the library. Sweet! Free (to you) yet paid for (by others) employees. A real win-win. See http://www.doleta.gov/seniors/

Rural Community Facilities Program. The Community Programs is a division of the Housing and Community Facilities Programs at the United States Department of Agriculture. Community Programs includes the Community Facilities Guaranteed Loan Program, the Community Facilities Direct Loan Program, and the Community Facilities Grant Program. These programs help develop essential community facilities for public use in rural areas. These facilities include schools, libraries, childcare, hospitals, medical clinics, assisted living facilities, fire and rescue stations, police stations, community centers, public buildings and transportation. In Utah see http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/ut/. Go to the listing for your area and contact the person there.

Military Libraries. I don’t know much about this but if you do, please reply.

Preservation Assistance Grant training

Colleen Eggett — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:41:29 +0000

April 3 2009, 10-11 am or 2-3 pm Mountain Time

BCR’s Digital and Preservation Services (DPS) provides free assistance to help you through the Preservation Assistance Grant (PAG) application process. Small- to medium-sized institutions can apply for $6000 to preserve and care for their collections through the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)’s Preservation Assistance Grant for Smaller Institutions. Eligible institutions include non-profit libraries, museums, historical societies, archival repositories, arts and cultural organizations, and town and county records offices.

For more information and to register for this program, visit:

http://www.bcr.org/training/schedule/programdetail.php?programid=350

Federal Recovery Grant Money for Library Broadband

Ray Matthews — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:12:25 +0000

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Public Law No. 111-5, will be providing $4.7 billion establishing the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program. This program will fund eligible entities to develop and expand broadband services to rural and underserved areas and to improve access to broadband by public safety agencies.

At least $200 million of this funding will be available in grants for upgrading broadband at public computing centers including community college libraries and public libraries.

Get the details about these broadband grants at:

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/broadbandgrants/