New Jersey LSTA Five Year Plan, Part 1

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Federal Funding of New Jersey Library Programs

On September 30, 1996, Congress passed and the President signed an Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act which authorized the restructuring of the federal Library Services and Construction Act (LSCA) into the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) which is in force from October 1, 1997 through September 30, 2002.

The original intention of the Library Services and Construction Act (LSCA), enacted in 1956, was to assist states in extending library services to rural areas. LSCA has extended library services in many new and innovative directions by:

increasing citizen access to library resources;
improving statewide services for the blind and physically handicapped;
improving the capacity of public libraries to provide services to special populations (e.g., people with limited English-speaking proficiency, people living in poverty, unserved people in rural and urban areas, and people who are handicapped, illiterate, elderly, unemployed); and
introducing users to accessing information contained in non-book formats (e.g., audio and video cassettes, multimedia CD-ROMs, online databases and Web sites).

After forty years of successfully developing state-based library programs the LSCA legislation was rewritten. LSTA now allows a greater portion of federal funding to be used for technology which meets the growing needs of libraries and library users for increased access to electronic resources.

The purpose of the Library Services and Technology Act is:

to consolidate Federal library service programs;
to stimulate excellence and promote access to learning and information resources in all types of libraries for individuals of all ages;
to promote library services that provide all users access to information through state, regional, national and international electronic networks;
to provide linkages among and between libraries; and
to promote targeted library services to people of diverse geographic, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, to individuals with disabilities and to people with limited functional literacy or information skills.

The focus of the Act is on two key priorities for library programs:

information access through technology; and
targeting library and information services to persons having difficulty using a library and to underserved urban and rural communities, including children (from birth through age 17) from families with incomes below the poverty line.

The Information Access Through Technology priority includes the following objectives:

establishing or enhancing electronic linkages among or between libraries;
electronically linking libraries with educational, social or information services;
assisting libraries in accessing information through electronic networks;
encouraging libraries in different areas, and encouraging different types of libraries, to establish consortia and share resources; and
paying costs for libraries to acquire or share computer systems and telecommunications technologies.

Preparation of a LSTA Five Year Plan

In order to be eligible to receive a Library Services and Technology Act grant, the State Library must submit a five year state plan to the Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The Plan shall establish goals, specify priorities, describe activities consistent with the intent of the Act and describe evaluation methods that will be used to determine the success of activities funded by the Act.

Input to developing the Plan has been sought from representatives from a wide range of New Jersey libraries and agencies, including public, academic, institutional and special libraries, school library media centers, library computer consortia, and the Regional Library Cooperatives. A meeting of an invited group of 30 librarians, which included members of the LSCA Advisory Council, was held at which the group developed priorities and recommended eligible programs for which LSTA funding could be used. A copy of the draft Plan was distributed to this group for review and comment and the full text was made available through the State Library's Web site.

Another planning process aimed at developing a statewide technology plan directly relates to the development of activities for the Information Access Through Technology component of the LSTA Five Year Plan. In 1996 the State Librarian appointed a 15 member committee, representative of all types of libraries and library organizations, to work with State Library staff to develop a technology plan. With input from committee members, the Regional Library Cooperative's technology plans and other state planning documents, the State Library prepared Libraries 2000: New Jersey's Technology Plan for Libraries in the 21st Century. The goals, objectives and activities identified in the Plan have been widely disseminated to fifteen groups of librarians, library trustees and friends during the fall of 1996. Many of the elements contained in Libraries 2000 will be incorporated into the LSTA Five Year Plan.

The LSTA Five Year Plan identifies activities that will be funded with federal dollars. Federal funding represents only a small percentage of the amount expended by the state annually to provide a program of library services. To fully understand the reasons for the selection of activities for funding under LSTA, it is necessary to have background information on related programs supported by state and private funds and the technology projects already underway to implement the Libraries 2000 plan.

State and Private Funding of New Jersey Library Programs

The State Library and the library community is well positioned to use federal funding to provide new and innovative LSTA programs because annual state appropriations, as outlined below, fund regional library networks, statewide services, aid programs to public libraries, and grant programs to assist public libraries to provide specific programs and services identified in the New Jersey Administrative Code.

New Jersey State Network Aid provides residents with full and equal access to library programs and materials not available within their communities and promotes cooperation among all types of libraries. In order to accomplish this goal, the State Library administers a program of regional and statewide services.
Regional Services are provided by four Regional Library Cooperatives who provide supplemental reference services, interlibrary loan services, delivery services for library materials, technology initiatives to maximize inter-connectivity of the state's information resources, technical support and continuing education services to Network members in their regions.

Statewide services include the following:

the New Jersey State Library Access Center locates materials and borrows them for non-OCLC member libraries online using the OCLC online national union catalog database and interlibrary loan subsystem.
New Jersey Union List of Serials is available online via the OCLC database and a copy of the NJULS database is mounted on local system computers in the northern and southern portions of the state.
Statewide Contract Libraries, consisting of major research/resource libraries, receive contracts to provide supplemental reference in specific subjects and/or interlibrary loan services.
New Jersey Nightline provides telephone reference services directly to New Jersey residents, seven days a week, during the hours that public libraries are closed.
Interlibrary Loan Net Lender Compensation Program encourages libraries to share their library materials with other libraries by partially compensating the lending library for the costs of providing the interlibrary loan.

Library Development Aid supports grant programs for: multimedia audio-visual public library services, collection evaluation and development, institutional library services, maintenance and preservation of library collections, and municipal branch library services.

New Jersey State Library Aid supports Per Capita State Aid for Public Libraries, Per Capita State Aid for Institutional Libraries, and the Incentive Grant Program which encourages the establishment of expanded or enhanced forms of service through the development of larger units of library service.

The State Library also administers the Tischler Memorial Grant which is funded by accrued interest on a bequest from Nathaniel and Florence Taylor Tischler to the New Jersey State Library. Their intention was to improve library service throughout New Jersey, especially to "small and needy" municipalities and communities.

Five million dollars was made available through the Higher Education Technology Infrastructure Fund to be allocated for non-matching public library technology grants or for statewide technology initiatives administered through the New Jersey State Library.

Because state funding has been available to fund the services listed above, LSCA federal funds were available to support a wide range of competitive grant programs. Libraries have used federal funds to develop: literacy programs; job and career programs for the unemployed; services for the elderly, handicapped, persons with limited English-speaking proficiency, underserved persons in rural and urban populations; and cooperative resource sharing programs among public, school and academic libraries.

Resource sharing through technology has been a major emphasis in LSCA funded grant programs for the past twenty years. Grants have been given for the following:

consultant services to assist libraries in automating their libraries;
automated circulation control and online catalogs systems purchased by library consortia;
retrospective conversion of library records to machine- readable form;
membership for libraries to participate in the OCLC online national union catalog database and to share resources through its cataloging and interlibrary loan activities;
conversion of the New Jersey Union List of Serials to machine-readable form and making it available online through the OCLC database; and
grants for small libraries to purchase computers to provide reference services.

For the last five years, the intent of many of the state funded grant programs and the Tischler Memorial Grant program has been to provide public libraries and their patrons with access to electronic resources. Grant funding has been used to purchase or provide: multimedia computers, library materials in CD-ROM format, online patron access catalog (OPAC) and community information modules for local systems, patron dial-in access to OPACs from their homes and access to the Internet.

Building on technology projects funded through LSCA, state and private grant programs, the State Library developed a technology plan which will assist all New Jersey libraries to play a vital role in assuring that access to electronic resources is universally available to all segments of the state's population on an equitable basis. Many projects identified in the statewide technology plan, although eligible for LSTA funding, have been allocated funds from state and private sources, thus making LSTA funding available to support additional innovative programs.

Technology Plan: Libraries 2000

In 1996 the State Library issued a statewide technology plan entitled Libraries 2000: New Jersey's Technology Plan for Libraries in the 21st Century. The Plan was developed based on State Library staff input, the content of various statewide and regional plans and the work of a 15 member Technology Committee, appointed by the State Librarian, which represented all types of libraries and various library organizations. The Plan's vision statement is: "All citizens of New Jersey participate fully and share equitably in the benefits of the information revolution."

The goals outlined in Libraries 2000 are in agreement with LSTA's priorities for services. These goals state that:

all libraries are linked electronically;
all libraries have the equipment to implement Libraries 2000;
all libraries have Internet, World Wide Web access;
all libraries have access to an online bibliographic database and an interlibrary loan subsystem;
all libraries have access to full text periodical articles and information in electronic formats;
all library staff have the expertise and skills to implement Libraries 2000;
all citizens of New Jersey are aware of the role of libraries in providing access to information;
all citizens have access to traditional library services according to their needs; and
sufficient funding is available to implement Libraries 2000.

Presentations were made at five regional meetings throughout the state at which the Plan's goals, objectives and activities were discussed. Librarians from all types of libraries were encouraged to attend these meetings and give their input. To further disseminate the plan, the State Librarian made ten presentations to various groups of librarians, trustees and friends throughout the state. The plan has been well received by the library community. It has been approved by the State Treasurer's Office of Management & Budget and the Governor's Office because the plan redirects existing state and federal funds and builds on investments already made by local libraries.

Implementing Libraries 2000

The State Library, using state and federal funds, has been able to address the following five technology goals outlined in the Plan:

To assure that every public library has at least one state-of-the-art multimedia computer capable of both accessing remote and CD-ROM databases, the State Library developed an Electronic Resources for Public Libraries grant program. Libraries already having this state-of-the-art computer were given a grant to purchase telecommunications equipment, software, materials, services, etc. that expand their access to electronic resources. In FY 1997, 253 public libraries were awarded state-funded contracts for a total of $817,781.
To meet the needs of librarians for technology training, the State Library issued state-funded contracts, totaling $200,000, to establish Technology Training Centers in four areas of the state. These Centers, housed in public libraries, contain state-of-the-art computer equipment which can be used by library staff and patrons to receive instruction in searching the Internet and in using multimedia CD-ROM materials and various computer programs for word processing, spread sheets, etc.
To address the goal of ensuring libraries economical access to the Internet and remote resource databases, the State Library has spent one million dollars from LSCA Titles I and II and LSTA funding to establish a network of 15 Hub Libraries, that provide Internet access and technical support to public libraries within their designated geographical areas. Ninety percent of the public libraries in the state are currently getting their Internet access through a Hub Library.
In order to assure that every public library: 1) has adequate PCs for Internet access; 2) can replace out-of-date PCs; 3) can purchase equipment to provide high quality, fast information and reference services; and 4) can purchase PCs for staff to serve the public and for patron use for job searching, word processing, ESL training, etc., the State Library awarded 4.3 million dollars from the Higher Education Technology Infrastructure Fund.
To meet the demand to share resources efficiently throughout the state, the State Library allocated $350,000 of state funds to purchase the software and hardware necessary to implement a Virtual Catalog Statewide Interlibrary Loan System.
In order to provide all libraries with electronic access to citation databases containing full text periodical articles, the State Library and three Regional Library Cooperatives, using a portion of their annual New Jersey State Network Aid appropriation, negotiated a statewide contracts which also allows library users offsite Internet access to these databases.

A total of $3,217,781 has been allocated to implement Libraries 2000 technology projects. Of that total, $1,685,260 is state funds from Library Development Aid and New Jersey Network Library Aid; $147,521 is from the Tischler Memorial Grant program; $545,000 is from FY 1996 and 1997 LSCA Title I and Title III funds; and $840,000 is from LSCA Title II funds designated for technological enhancement.

While the initial funding for many of these projects does not involve the use of LSTA funding, a number of on-going projects will receive LSTA funds to complete later phases during the October 1, 1997 through September 30, 2002 period covered by the LSTA Five Year Plan.

Go on to Part 2

Last updated: September 13, 2000.
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