ACLA Changes Formula for Library Funding

Member Libraries of the Allegheny County Library Association, have agreed to a new formula for the distribution of Regional Asset District funding. The Allegheny County Libraries Association is slated to receive Nearly $5.2 million next year from the 1% sales tax levied in Allegheny County. ACLA Executive Director Marilyn Jenkins says the 44 libraries in the system asked for the new funding formula. The old one had been in place since the first RAD dollars began to flow to the libraries. She says the request launched an 18-month review and rewriting process. She says the new formula is more “fair and equitable.” Among the factors that go into the formula are population, usage, the relative wealth of communities served and circulation of materials outside of the library’s service area. Jenkins says she thinks the framework of the new formula will have a long life but it will be reviewed regularly. She says among the items not in the formula but of great importance to libraries these days is computer usage. She says that may be factored in some day in the future. The RAD board must approve the new formula before it takes effect.

Speakers Address Future of Libraries

The future of libraries will be addressed by two nationally known speakers tomorrow at the Greentree Radisson in a program sponsored by the Allegheny County Library Association.

Michael Stephens, a professor at Dominican University in Illinois, says the library of the future will be very flexible, with the same space perhaps serving as a reading area at one point of the day, a place later where students prepare an audiovisual presentation, and then maybe an art space in the evening.

Futurist Thomas Frey from the DaVinci Institute in Colorado says just as the addition of computers have brought a new population of users into libraries today, additions such as podcast and video studios will do the same in the future, with visitors evolving from information consumers into information producers.

Frey says libraries of the future will be tourist destinations, as Seattle's already is.