Lib Politics Rodeo October 7, 2014

Welcome to the Lib Politics Rodeo. Every Tuesday we will round up the previous week’s news on library politics and highlight some of the things that we are following or reading. Here’s what we have in our lassos this week…

News

It’s 4 weeks (28 days) until November 4th elections and we are tracking 41 library campaigns, 8 of which we are supporting. New news for the rodeo is slowing down, but we are still finding a couple to report on. It’s time for you to take a look at your local ballots and let us know if we have missed any library elections in your area. We want to report on the all in our post November wrap up.

Great news from St. James (MO) last week. Proposition A, a 30 cents per $100 tax, for the library was passed 287 votes to 255 votes. The same measure passed narrowly in August, but was contested. Up until now the library has been funded by a private donation and membership fees. Now that it is publicly funded, residents no longer need to pay for access. Also, the library will now be eligible for public library grant opportunities.

The Lincoln County Library (OR) will have a 9 cent per $1,000 tax renewal on the November 4th ballot. This property tax funds library materials and staff in Lincoln County and is also used for centralized services like cataloging and Interlibrary Loan.

In "Projects We Love" news, Free For All films is running a kickstarter to build funding for a new movie about America's libraries. We've seen some early footage and its very cool.  You can too on their Kickstarter page.  It would be fantastic for libraries to have a movie like this out in the world. Make sure you "check it out".

That’s all for today. Join us next week for another round up. Happy trails!