Outside the Hudson Area Library, two white lions seem to hang their heavy rusting heads and sigh.  The building they guard, built in 1816 as a poorhouse, now serves as the public library for some 12,000 citizens in central Columbia County, and is in need of more than a few repairs.  The whole structure slouches in a state of dignified neglect, somewhat self-conscious of its rotting moldings and crumbling mortar.  Perhaps more important, the books inside, save a few recent New York Times bestsellers, give off the smell and aura of the Eisenhower Administration.  Three of the library's four computers are crammed into the director's office, and like the director, Frank Rees, they seem overworked and in need of an upgrade.  Rees knows all about these problems, and when asked about the future of his library, he seems despondent and hopeful at the same time.  "The only proper way to support a library is through taxpayer dollars and we're not getting nearly enough," he says.

Libraries are just one of many public institutions in New York fighting to secure a shrinking pool of state money.  In January, Governor Pataki's office proposed a five percent cut in statewide library funding.  Many small public libraries (specifically those with a Chapter 414 qualification enabling them to ask for funding through public referenda) grow tired of waiting for funding increases from state and federal sources, and are now beginning to ask for direct local support.  Of the 20 or so such referenda held in the last five years in our area, nearly all have passed successfully.  "When people see just how few dollars libraries get these days," says Josh Cohen, executive director of the Mid-Hudson Library System, "they almost always realize what a bargain they're getting and therefore dig a little deeper to help out."

The Hudson Area Library's voters, however, are among the very few in the Hudson Valley who voted down budget increases last November, killing a proposal to roughly double general funding there.  Despite an October 2003 Marist Poll in which 63 percent of households nationwide claimed that they would vote for an increase in taxes to support the library in their local community, voters from Hudson's suburb, Greenport, claimed that they were already overburdened by taxes.  Greenport is more affluent and homogenous than Hudson, and some of its residents did not attempt to hide their disapproval for what they saw as a proposal that delivered nothing more than extra books for Hudson's minorities.  "It's unfortunate," says Rees.  "But we're making the most of the money we do have."

Reading aside, Hudson's library, just blocks away from Columbia County's largest low-income housing developments, is probably the only opportunity that many of the small city's residents have to access the Internet.  Libraries have been in the business of books for millennia, but increasingly the public library is becoming the single place that affords all classes a chance to participate in the so-called electronic age.  According to PBS's "Newshour with Jim Lehrer," only 39 percent of households earning less than $25,000 a year are wired.  Many students from low-income families with no computers get access from either libraries or schools, which are also facing major cuts in budgets and staffing.

A CENTER FOR SOCIAL MOBILITY
The library has changed a lot since the turn of the last century when Andrew Carnegie and other robber barons erected reading temples throughout small-town America to seduce coal miner's kids to read the Classics.  The idea of the library was simple: get the lower classes to read and they'll behave themselves, work longer and harder, and contribute to a more stable social order.  While the rhetoric has changed over the years, the basic concept of the library as a center for social mobility has not.  In 2000, the New York State's Regent's Commission on Library Services completed a study of new trends, from which they determined that the modern library must serve as a center for "information literacy," hinting that as American manufacturing jobs continue to vanish, new job seekers must learn how to access and manipulate many forms of data if they hope to earn a living.  While the commission determined that the needs of today's readers and researchers are complex, they came up with a core of basic solutions to make the modern library more useful: expand libraries' weekend and evening hours, include more electronic databases, get the collections online, and of course, buy more computers.

In order to implement the reforms they outlined, The New York Board of Regents introduced New Century Libraries to the state legislature in 2003, a bill that asks for $108 million to fund a host of ambitious programs, including digitization grants, new construction, talking book and Braille libraries, and urban literacy initiatives.  Many question the chances of the bill's passage at a time when the state is struggling to pay for basics, such as state medical insurance, pensions, and education.  "Many of us realize that state money is very scarce these days," says Carol Desch, Coordinator of Statewide Services at the New York State Library, "but we're confident that the full reforms will eventually materialize if we can convince lawmakers that we have an urgent need."

It's difficult to determine the exact percentage of $108 million that the Hudson Valley's libraries will receive from New Century Libraries.  Many of our area's libraries are over 60 years old, and still need to improve access for the handicapped or install bathrooms, but the real problem here is in keeping up with the public's research demands.  "Unlike areas further upstate, the libraries of the Hudson Valley are suffering from success," says Josh Cohen at Mid-Hudson.  "We tend to have a very literate, politically active group of citizens in our area that both use[s] their library frequently and demand[s] the most up-to-date resources.  Many of our local libraries simply need to expand to keep up with demand."

Cohen cites growing numbers of second-home families that are often unhappy to discover that their town's libraries don't have the resources to stay open on weekends.  The second-home demographic is a compound problem for the Hudson Valley's libraries.  The influx of newcomers places a burden on the limited resources of small towns and hamlets without contributing to an increase in state funding.  The New York State Education Law divvies out cash to libraries based on a formula that largely favors populated areas.  Since most second-home families in the Hudson Valley continue to list their downstate addresses as primary residences, the Census 2000 does not accurately reflect the increases in upstate library users.  Fewer upstate primary residences equal fewer state dollars for our area, which ultimately translates to fewer books, software, and to locked doors on Sunday.

New Century Libraries will likely provide our region with the extra computers that the Regents Commission says are so badly needed.  While the Hudson Valley has more per-capita computer owners than the more rural areas to the north and some inner-city centers to our south, many families still choose to go to their local library for faster Internet connections.  "We often have a packed waiting list of people who want to use our computers," says Jim Tupple, a Board Member for the Kinderhook Memorial Library.  "These people have dial-ups at home and they come in here to take advantage of our cable connection to do everything from downloading pictures for school reports to checking up on their stocks."  Media and software companies, such as TimeWarner and Microsoft, have followed in the footsteps of Andrew Carnegie by installing free DSL and cable connections in small-town libraries from coast to coast.  All of the libraries in our area have at least DSL connections because of these programs.  Some question the altruism, however, and suspect a game of clever advertising.  "Once people see these faster computers," says Tupple, "they're likely to buy a subscription for their own homes."  A staff member at the Catskill Public Library, who declined to give her name, told me rather surreptitiously: "It's all about the computers these days - you know, computers are slowly taking over the world."

A NOVEL APPROACH
One of the largest components of New Century Libraries, and the program most like to receive funding through a compromised version of the bill now buzzing around Albany, is NOVEL (New York Online Virtual Electronic Library).  The system, now funded as a pilot program through federal dollars, is the most ambitious attempt to allow the small local library to access information without having to purchase materials and stock them on its shelves.  Years ago, a library only had to buy one book, say Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.  Today, the same library might buy the book, the audiocassette, a narrated CD, an interactive CD-ROM version, and perhaps various other software programs about local pollution and environmental regulations.

One of the fastest rising costs to libraries involves the ever-changing, seemingly endless upgrades in software.  NOVEL hopes to remedy this by using its centralized purchasing power to buy user-rights only once for a piece of software, and then share the contents with all participating member libraries.  By one estimate, for every dollar the state library invests through NOVEL, local libraries would need to spend $30 to obtain the same records.  "It's a tremendous savings," says John Shaloike, director of the Southeastern New York Library Resources Council.  "The program will also benefit academic and school libraries as well because they would have the option of sharing in these subscriptions."

It would be impossible for an individual to obtain even a fraction of the services provided though NOVEL on his or her home computer, no matter how fast their Internet connection.  LexisNexis, for example, a popular database that searches millions of newspapers, journals, and other sources, would cost an individual between $300-500 for a standard one-year subscription.  NOVEL provides not only this database, but thousands of others just like it that access general articles, legal, medical, and financial information.  "This program is already working in over four thousand libraries in our state," says Carol Desch at the New York State Library, "and I don't think most people yet know how incredible it is."

Despite these advances in remote and online technology it doesn't seem that all of the library's traditional roles will disappear anytime soon.  As our public spaces vanish, communities increasingly rely on the local library for public lectures, meetings, support groups, and even political functions.  "And even if everyone eventually does obtain the ability to access the world's information from their offices and bedrooms, you'll still need some place to help make sense of it all," says Kinderhook's Tupple.  "I don't think there will ever be an end to the kid running in my door shouting ,'Hey you, I've got to write this paper on Ulysses S. Grant and I need some help.'"

A GROWING DEMAND
While ambitious, not even New Century Libraries will satisfy everyone's budget woes.  Elting Memorial Library in New Paltz has unsuccessfully tried to fund a $3 million expansion program for the last 15 years, and it doesn't appear that enough of the $20 million budgeted for library construction under New Century Libraries will trickle down to the Mid-Hudson region.  Kingston's library similarly estimates it will need $1 million to fund its expansion plans.  Unlike the libraries with a Chapter 414 qualification, New Paltz and Kingston are association libraries run by private boards of directors, which are unable to ask for funding through direct public referenda.  "We're really at the mercy of the town and whatever it chooses to give us," says John Giralico, director of the New Paltz library.  "People do get frustrated, but fortunately we live in an area where many appreciate us and try to help out."

New Paltz represents the classic Hudson Valley library struggling to stretch dollars to match a growing demand.  The library's genealogical collection, one of the best between Albany and New York, is in need of professional archival care and humidity control.  Repeatedly, locals have asked the library to provide increased space for meetings and special functions, and the staff struggles to accommodate the steady stream of traffic on their three computers.  "Even if New Century Library passes," says Giralco, "we won't have nearly enough cash on hand to fund what we hope to do."  Beginning this spring, New Paltz plans to raise money the old-fashioned way, riding around town with an open hat, asking for direct help through donations.

Meanwhile, The Hudson Area Library actively maintains its own fund drive in order to pay its bills - and things aren't all bad at the former poorhouse.  Despite the failed referendum in Greenport, voters within Hudson's city limits did approve a separate and modest budget increase last fall, thus helping the library to avoid a deficit for the first time in several years.  As I sat in Hudson's library, searching through the latest newspapers neatly stacked on a card table, two library clerks settled down around the circulation desk.  Clearly old friends, the two chatted about neighbors, relatives, and friends in the hospital.  One mentioned a loved one who'd been in the hospital for kidney failure, but she could have easily been speaking about her own library: "I'm really not going to let it get me down," she said.  "Things will improve somehow - they always do.  We'll find a way to get through it all."