BURBANK : New Tax Program to Help Fund Libraries

Like many librarians struggling with a tight budget, Holly Ziman, the school library coordinator for Burbank, could use an extra few thousand dollars.

She’s hoping California taxpayers will provide that extra boost through a new program that allows wage-earners to set aside a portion of their tax bills for libraries at public schools.

“I could do quite nicely with $8,000 to $10,000 in each library,” said Ziman, who was hired in December by the city to help the school district library system, which has been adrift for three years. “But I think $5,000 to $6,000 would really do a nice job.”

Ziman works for the city, but her job is to oversee the libraries at the Burbank Unified School District’s high schools and middle schools. The Burbank City Council created her position to help the school district, which three years ago had to lay off its librarians because of budget cuts.

In the three years before she took over, Ziman said, the libraries were run by clerks and their book collections suffered.

“Things tend to have drifted,” said Ziman, who found that the district’s collection of science materials had suffered the most because they had not been updated.

“There’s been a lot of new technology and we felt we were being passed by the wayside,” Ziman said.

But on the horizon is a glimmer of hope that Burbank public school students will get both the technology and access to current materials they need. This year’s state tax forms will include a box allowing taxpayers to indicate that they want to make a donation to public libraries.

In previous years, taxpayers have had the choice to make donations to preserve endangered species.

Many advocates of public libraries say they regard support for book collections and library services as endangered.

“(In California) we are ranked last in terms of support for school libraries,” Ziman said.

The tax form checkoff does not allow the taxpayer to indicate where the funds should go, but local libraries would apply for extra funding based on how much revenue the state receives.

With extra funding, Ziman would hope to increase the numbers of books and magazines for Burbank High and John Burroughs High School students, and give them access to new computer technologies that will help them later in life.

“We’re hoping that by making that available to them, when they come into a public library and later go on to a university, they will be better prepared to use the library system,” Ziman said.