Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

The Haines Borough Public Library will be closed Fridays beginning July 17 through the end of June 2021, due to budget cuts.

This is not the first time the library has seen its budget reduced, but it is the first time cuts will translate to a significant loss of service.

“Over the years, we’ve been asked to cut and cut and cut, and now we’ve reached the point where we can’t make it invisible to patrons anymore,” library director Carolyn Goolsby said.

This spring, the Haines Borough Assembly cut $42,000 from the facility’s roughly $450,000 budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 to help offset reductions in state funding and an anticipated loss of sales tax revenue from the COVID-19 shutdown of tourism.

“We’re living in some difficult times and we need to take a look at what is essential,” assembly member Paul Rogers said at a meeting in May. He said services like the library are not essential when compared with policing, emergency response and the school, and the majority of assembly members agreed.

The $42,000 cut to the library will largely be absorbed through the Friday closure and elimination of two part-time circulation clerk positions.

In total, the two clerks worked 24.5 hours per week staffing the desk, filling online orders, cleaning and “doing a lot of the behind the scenes work to make the library run,” Goolsby said. The library has nine remaining staff members. All but two are part-time positions.

Goolsby said the decision to close Fridays was reached after surveying patrons.

Fridays are the library’s least busy weekday, comparable to weekend traffic. Goolsby said she wanted to keep the library open on weekends because they tend to cater to a different segment of the population — those who work during the week.

The survey asked if patrons preferred closure on a different day, but 78% said they preferred Fridays, Goolsby said.

Closures one day per week are not uncommon for libraries, the director said, although closure days tend to vary based on the needs of the community. The Petersburg library is closed Sundays. Other communities have multi-day library closures. Skagway’s and Wrangell’s are closed Sunday through Tuesday, and still others are open seven days per week, like Sitka’s.

Goolsby said she hopes the borough’s financial situation will have improved by next year, allowing the library to resume seven-day service.

The library’s current hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Except for meeting rooms, the library building is open to the public. Masks and social distancing are encouraged.