ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

Washington Hotline

Carol Henderson is executive director of ALA's Washington Office; e-mail cch@alawash.org

Federal funding for se- lected programs of interest to college and research li- braries is shown below. Most notable is the elimination of all funding for two Higher Education Act (HEA) Title II library programs—the II-A college library technology program, and the II-C re- search library program. Al- though Department of Edu- cation programs were fund- ed at 40 percent more than the administration requested, the pressure to show elimination of at least some programs targeted for zero in the Clinton budget and in the Gore reinventing govern- ment initiative was very strong.

The only HEA programs supported by the House were the II-B education and training program, and $1.5 million in first-time funding for II-D, the historically black colleges and uni- versities (HBCU) library and information sci- ence program. The HBCU funding was not included in the Senate bill and was dropped in conference.

The Senate supported library education and training, but moved the funding for HEA II-A and II-C into other places. For instance, the II-C research library program would have been reinvented through funds in the II-B dem- onstration program for digitazation of research library resources, but digitization was dropped in House-Senate conference. The Senate also added $5,578,000 to the LSCA III interlibrary cooperation and resource sharing program for states to establish gate- ways for access to public, aca- demic, and research library collections. The increase was reduced to $3,951,000 in con- ference.

HEA II-B research and demonstration projects are normally competitive grants or contracts. However, for FY95 Congress specified how the entire $6.5 million appropriated was to be di- rected. The Secretary of Edu- cation is “to use $5,000,000 to fund additional projects that competed in 1994 for demonstration of online and dial-in access to a statewide, multitype bibliographic da- tabase through a statewide fiber optic network.” Thus, no new applica- tions will be solicited. The Department of Edu- cation made one such grant of about $2.5 mil- lion in FY94, and is expected to make a few new awards from the existing pool of appli- cants.

The remaining $1.5 million is “for a demonstration project making Federal information and other databases available for public use by connecting a multistate consortium of public and private colleges and universities to a public library and an historic library.” This funding was originally in the Senate-passed version of H.R. 4606 where S. Rept. 103-318 indicated that “Portland State University, in conjunction with the Oregon Historical Society, would be especially suited to operate” such a program.

The Senate had passed a total of $8,270,000 for HEAII-B research and demonstrations, with $3,994,000 for “demonstration projects involving the digitization of research library collections and the development of related organizational tools for access to these digital resources.” However, House-Senate conferees cut the Senate total to $6.5 million, deleted the digitization projects, and switched $2.5 million of that funding to bring the statewide fiber optic network project funding to $5 million.

Federal Funding of Selected Programs