Testimony

Information Outlook, Feb, 2005 by Tom Nielsen

To the Editor:

I'd like to share with you a wonderful experience I had recently to talk to New York State legislators about what special librarians do.

Dottie Heibing, the executive director of the Metropolitan New York Library Council, my local library consortium, invited me to testify before the New York State Assembly Standing Committee on Libraries and Education Technology at a hearing held in New York City on October 18, 2004. This hearing was one of five held around the state offering librarians the opportunity to discuss the impact of a 5% cut in funding to libraries and library systems across the state.

Dottie asked that I talk about how cuts to funding at library systems like METRO would affect me and other special librarians, so I was prepared to do a little stumping for METRO as well as a little educating, knowing these legislators would not have much exposure to special librarians.

I picked up on a statement made by the committee chairwoman, Sandra Galek, about learning from the witnesses at the hearing and began my statement by acknowledging that as the only special librarian I would be educating them about what we do.

I talked about how most special librarians report to non-librarians and as a result must justify their requests for outside training at places like METRO with extra care for the bottom line. I also talked about the importance of networking and challenged committee members to imagine that they were the only assemblyperson for New York State, much like solo librarians are the only librarian in many organizations. And with the weight of Assembly work on their shoulders alone, could they understand the need to network with colleagues to discuss specific issues shared by them and their colleagues in other states.

I felt very honored to have this opportunity to be a part of the democratic process in this way and to talk to Chairperson Galek after the hearing. I asked her how she felt about the chance that the 5 percent cut would be eliminated and although she was non-committal, I was elated to learn several days later from Dottie that Ms. Galek had mentioned me at a subsequent hearing, saying she had learned a lot about what special librarians do.

I can't tell you how encouraging and exciting that is because I know that SLA is not the most visible group of librarians out there, but I see that there are many places where we can increase our visibility and I had a wonderful opportunity to do that.