Liverpool libraries saved after budget boost – for now; Guardian, March 13, 2017

Danuta Kean, Guardian; 

Liverpool libraries saved after budget boost – for now

"Public libraries in Liverpool have been saved from closure after the government promised £27m for adult social care in the city – however, the city’s mayor has warned that the decision is a stay of execution, rather than a permanent reprieve for the beleaguered library service.

The £27m injection is Liverpool’s share of an extra £2bn promised last week by the chancellor, Philip Hammond, to shore up local councils’ social care provision across the country. Four of the city’s 13 libraries were due to close, with others to be transferred to community groups, under plans aimed at saving £1.6m. Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson said the cuts were needed to plug a £90m hole in the local authority’s budgets over the next three years.

Announcing the reprieve, Anderson said the money meant council reserves could now be redirected to protect all Liverpool’s libraries for the next three years. Describing the money as “a small bit of breathing space” and libraries as “a fundamental building block of lifelong education”, Anderson added: “The fact that we had to look at cutting its services was genuinely heartbreaking and shows the scale of the problem which councils like Liverpool are having to address.”"

Upheaval at the New York Public Library: The Nation, 11/30/11

Scott Sherman, The Nation; Upheaval at the New York Public Library:

"The man who must contend with the NYPL’s budget difficulties is its new president, a tall, amiable, casually dressed political scientist named Anthony Marx, who started at the library on July 1. Marx had been the president of Amherst College, where during his eight-year tenure he raised great sums of money and did much to diversify the student body. But obtaining the financial resources to sustain the NYPL in these lean and mean times is a task that’s sure to keep Marx tossing in his bed at night. (Personal reasons may also keep Marx from sleeping soundly: on the afternoon of November 6 he was arrested in Upper Manhattan for driving while intoxicated; his blood alcohol level was 0.19. He is scheduled to appear in court on December 9.) He faces an additional challenge with the CLP, devised by his predecessor and scheduled to be completed in 2015.

The centerpiece of the CLP—expected to cost anywhere from $250 million to $350 million—is the construction of a state-of-the-art, computer-oriented library designed by British architect Norman Foster, in the vast interior of the Schwarzman Building."