[OPLINLIST] Cost Cutting Compilation

[Susan Pieper]

The following are snippets of what I have received thus far:

   - We may end up charging a $2-3 postage fee for out-of-system
   interlibrary loans. We have some patrons who regularly present lists of
   items that we don't own and that can't be found in our consortium, SEO. We
   may allow 1-2 per month free, and then charge for anything "extra", or we
   may just charge a set fee per item.
   - We changed our delivery schedule from 3 days to 2 days over a year ago
   in order to save money.  At this time we don't have any plans to charge
   patrons for ILL
   - Participation in M.O.R.E. is not mandatory, but it is a lot cheaper
   than OCLC.  In addition, the conditions you can lend the loaned item to
   your patrons are very much more favorable than OCLC or SEO and are also more
   cost effective.  In our case too, we have cut our materials budget
   immensely.  For at least the next three month it has been cut by 90%.  With
   M.O.R.E. we stand a much greater chance of getting newer items in that we
   are not able to purchase.
   - We don’t charge for ILL services unless we borrow from a library that
   charges us. With the amount of ILL we do (both OCLC and M.O.R.E.) we are not
   able to adjust our Cargo delivery schedule.  We only lend and borrow from
   those libraries that are on the Cargo system so we have cut our postage
   quite a lot. If our patron really needs something that can’t be found from a
   library on the Cargo system, we do charge the cost of the postage to return
   the item to the patron.
   - We started charging $1.00 for ILLs awhile ago.  This is just a token
   amount, but it cut down on the number of people forgetting to pick up ILLs
   or deciding they didn't want them after they were delivered.  We may have
   to revisit the amount we charge, but this has helped a little.
   - Participation in OLS: MORE is not mandatory. You may be able to make
   modifications to your delivery schedule.  However, it is my understanding
   that your schedule can be dependent upon your volume.  More specifically,
   if you have very high volume, you probably can’t go to minimum delivery.
   I don’t know what the thresholds are, but you would need to investigate
   that
   - We are certainly not considering adjusting our Cargo delivery schedule,
   charging for ILL requests, or ending our SEO membership. I think a better
   way to go is to find new, unique services that we can charge for in order to
   offset costs for our essential services. We sell dog tags in December and
   January, and we make $0.75 per tag that we sell.  It doesn't amount to
   much- a few hundred dollars a year, but it's something.  We have a small
   digital photo printer that makes another few hundred dollars a year for us,
   and we resurface CDs, DVDs, and video games for our patrons at $2 per disc.
   - We would like to charge for M.O.R.E. requests to cover the extreme
   labor-entensive staff time. The volume has really increased since our book
   budget has decreased. We do realize, however, that this is a
   federally-funded program. Perhaps if we charge the fee to cover our deliver
   service -- which is not federally funded? This may be an option.
   - In February, we began charging patrons $2 per item for OCLC ILLs to
   cover return postage costs. In July, we will reduce Cargo delivery for one
   of our branches from 5 to 3 days per week. We have cut hours twice,
   decimated the materials budget twice, gone from 52 staff to 30 staff in 18
   months (due to attrition... which has allowed us to avoid layoffs so far),
   etc.

I'll post more as they come in.
Thank you all for your very constructive feedback!
Best,
Susan
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Susan Hill Pieper
Director/Editor
Paulding County Carnegie Library
205 S Main St
Paulding, Ohio 45879
419-399-2032 voice 419-3999-2114 fax
www.pauldingcountylibrary.org
ALA Councilor-at-Large
PLA Executive Board
ARSL Ex-Officio Board Member
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