Fiscal Year 2018 Annual Report
Montana State Library
Goals and Objectives
The Montana State Library helps all organizations, communities, and Montanans thrive through excellent library resources and services.
Goal One: Foster partnerships
Partnerships are necessary to ensure that Montanans thrive. Through partnerships, MSL and those we serve will continue to move Montana forward.
Goal Two: Secure sufficient and sustainable funding
We have the funds and capacity to meet the expectations of our partners and Montanans. We are an innovative, forward thinking, and fiscally responsible organization in fulfilling our mandates and meeting the expectations of our partners and Montana citizens.
Goal Three: Create a useful information infrastructure
Montanans have the information and library services they need to understand and influence change in their community. Others follow Montana’s model of open, transparent, cooperative information management practices.
Year in Review
Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 was one of the most challenging in the history of the Montana State Library. Due to declining state revenue, the Governor's Office enacted triggers as required by Senate Bill 261 passed by the 2017 Legislature. These budget reduction triggers, coupled with cuts to the overall state budget found in House Bill 2, cut the State Library budget by approximately $1 million annually.
The State Library was forced to take multiple measures to manage these cuts. A number of staff were laid off, the Talking Book Library was reorganized under the Digital Library, the contract for the Montana Natural Heritage Program was cut by 25% ($115,000 annually), and the agency’s information technology budget was reduced.
Additionally, the State Library adopted a wholly digital service model when we closed our public reading room. This area, and the available print collection, was underutilized and by closing the space, the State Library saved more than $100,000 per year in rent costs. The federal document collection was returned to the University of Montana’s Mansfield Library, the Natural Resources and Professional Development collections were heavily weeded and moved to another location within the Library, and the remaining print state publications were prioritized for digitization.
When planning for the budget cuts, the State Library Commission directed the State Library to focus on our statutory mission while ensuring that what we will continue to do we will do well, continuing to serve those who are most vulnerable, and positioning the State Library to rebuild for the future.
With the exception of the closure of the reading room and the loss of colleagues and friends, the impact of the budget cuts were not immediately apparent; however, they did reveal themselves over time. Staff ultimately had less time to do the work that mattered. High priority projects such as a rewrite of the cadastral application were put on hold, staff had less time to devote to library consulting, two Montana Spatial Data Infrastructure theme (Geographic Names and Transportation) went unedited, and other key data, including land ownership and plants, animals, and habitats information, grew increasingly out of date.
In order to change the dialogue regarding the work of libraries, the State Library planned a public awareness campaign that focused on the role that the library and information communities play to support economic development. And in FY 2018 the State Library contracted with Library Strategies and sat a task force to help plan for the creation of a non-profit to raise money to support library and information services statewide.
Loss, while difficult, always reveals opportunities. It is these opportunities on which the State Library is focused as we head into FY 2019 and beyond.