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Indicator IV-4
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State Library Agencies
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The official purpose a state library agenciy is to extend and develop public library services throughout that state. These agencies are also authorized to receive and distribute monies provided by Congress under the
Library Services and Technology Act, the major vehicle by which the federal government provides monies to states to develop library services within their borders. Beyond these similarities, state agencies vary both with respect to their locations within state governments and in terms of the services they provide not only to public libraries but also to the government and the public. For example, in 2002, the last year for which data describing the range of state library agency activities are available from the U.S. Department of Education’s
State Library Agencies Survey Program, ten agencies served as the archives for their states. Elsewhere, state archives are run by other agencies; in California, for instance, they are a division of the Office of the Secretary of State and are operated with monies from that office’s budget. Thus, the data presented here on the fiscal condition of library agencies do not capture the full extent of state investment in libraries, but they are the best available measure of the monies directed by states toward the preservation and development of public library resources.
Between the mid-1990s and 2001 state library agency budgets increased 27% (Figure IV-4a). Beginning in 2002, this trend was reversed, and by 2005 annual contractions in agency budgets had brought revenues down to $1.1 billion, an amount 16% below the 2001 high. Although 2005 revenues were above the 1994 level, population growth resulted in a net loss in terms of per capita revenues (Figure IV-4b). Thus, whereas approximately $5 per citizen went to library agencies in 1994 (a little over $4 having come from the state), in 2005 the figure per citizen was $3.64 (with $3 coming from the state). Because the proportion of agency budgets derived from federal sources remained fairly constant over the decade, the variation in total funding was almost entirely a result of changing state budget priorities.
Each year, the bulk of agency budgets, 60%–70%, was spent on assistance to local libraries. Thus, as total budgets first rose and
then declined, so did the level of funding made available to local entities. In 2005, $733 million in state library agency funding
went to support local library systems (Figure IV-4c), $93 million more than in 1994.
However, as in the case of agency spending overall, the per capita expenditure for
assistance to local libraries experienced a net decline over this time period, with states spending 23% percent less
per person in 2005 than they did approximately a decade earlier.
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