Public libraries are having to make sacrifices

BRUCE, Miss. (WCBI)- February is National Library Lovers Month, but many libraries aren’t feeling the love when budget time rolls around.

It’s a problem public libraries have been dealing with for years.

Trying to offer more with less funding from the state and federal level.

When you think of a library, the first thing you think of is books, but library manager Janice Vaughn said even that can be a challenge.

“We can’t buy older books we have to make sure they’re going to circulate them, so we have to be real careful about stuff like that a lot of the books that I’m buying now I’m buying paperback because books are so expensive,” said Vaughn.

That doesn’t leave much in the budget for extras, but at Bruce’s Jesse Yance Memorial Library, they try to do more for their patrons.

“I am very privileged to have a good city that backs me up, but as far as our whole system, we have to cut back on workshops and things that we do as far as educating. So we have to cut out a lot of that. We have a database that’s called Magnolia, it has a lot of databases that people use, and we have to pay for them individually. So they’re having to cut some of my favorite ones out of it because we just can’t afford it,” said Vaughn.

And there’s only so much that town leaders can do to help fill in the gap.

“Our city has cut us around $4,000 because of loss of revenue in the town we had some businesses shut down, and it just didn’t have the revenue,” said Vaughn.

Even with the loss in funds, the library is doing what it can to keep everything running smoothly.

“We tried to keep from affecting them we charge for printing sending fax and stuff like that we can get the same prices that we’ve always had of course the library is free to the public it’s not really, Except maybe they’re not getting the exact book they want,” said Vaughn.

Vaughn said friends of the library and fundraisers also help keep everything running the way it should.