The Georgia legislature finally approved the budget and...

     I'm not much behind in telling you this.  I just picked up a copy of the Georgia Public Library Service NEWS, the April 2011 issue.
     This is not a "copy per word," but I will tell you what most of the article said.  Those of us who work in Georgia libraries have been holding our breath, waiting to see how much more the library budget will be cut.
     On April 14th, the General Assembly adjourned after approving an $18.3 billion budget for the upcoming fiscal year.  The budget included awarding $1.15 million to help the Twiggs County Library rebuild after it was destroyed by a lightning strike and fire in April 2010.
     And the legislature strongly supported Department of Education funding for GALILEO, Georgia's virtual library, as part of the collaborative financing of this service for public and academic libraries and public schools.  We learned that Georgians used GALILEO to conduct more than 74 million searches in 2010.  The projected annual cost to duplicate GALILEO's resources for all institutions individually exceeds $22 million.
     Georgia's public libraries' budgets were cut 4% for FY2011.  If this budget package is signed by the governor, the cut in state support for Georgia's public libraries for FY2012 will be cut another 4% (or $1,402,057) on top of the last 4%.  That makes a total of 8% in two years, doesn't it?
    Now you know why we don't have any money to purchase new books or e-books or a few other things we'd all love to have.
     And now you know the rest of the story.