" It's disgusting. I will not name names, but am aware of a library advocacy group (most of which are doing a great service for the public, keeping libraries funded and accessible so The People, regardless of income, can have access to life-critical and democracy-critical information) which was pushing the past couple years for a large sum of funding for what I considered a dubious project even in flush fiscal years. Last year they were turned down. This year, if they had any sense, they would move on to other more practical matters, but I see they are still spending money lobbying for NYS to fund this project. In a year when schools, health care and other fundamental programs are seeing cuts, the nerve to keep pushing for this expensive frill is outrageous. And I am quite sure that libraries are far from being the most outrageous hands held out for goodies in Albany.

At least the NOVEL program, through the State Library, which provides free access to a list of useful databases to any resident of New York State was not slashed -- cut back a bit, reconfigured after an excellent independent study to find out exactly what resources are most useful to residents, but still available. Now that is an appropriate use of State funds -- educational databases for K-12 (which schools could never afford) and business info databases for people with small businesses which can't afford to shell out money to do the research which might help keep them afloat. They dropped most of the health info databases because so much really good info is available free on the web, though one vendor, Gale Cengage, is continuing giving access to Health and Wellness Resource Center for a year -- for free, voluntarily -- the State need not pay for it this year. I think they packaged it with their excellent Business and Company Resource Center.

But most lobbyists are bottomfeeders in my books.... "