On June 19, the PASCAL spring business meeting was held in Columbia Librarians from 35 member libraries were present. The Board of Directors presented a survival plan and the related operating budget to the membership.   The budget called for a 20% membership dues increase and levied service fees to partially cover the cost of maintaining our two major programs, electronic resource licenses and PASCAL Delivers. The budget was approved unanimously.

With the service fees, PASCAL will be able to maintain access to several core databases through the end of FY 2008-9, and will be able to operate the PASCAL Delivers service on a reduced basis (3-day/week deliveries). A major enabling factor is the fact that the databases that will be preserved are currently renewed on a calendar year and vendors were willing to offer a six month license extension.  Details regarding the service fees and presentations from the meeting may be found under member information on the website.

Thus, the membership has bought a year for us to convince the legislature and other stakeholders to reconsider the drastic cuts imposed on our important contribution to the state’s knowledge base. We’ll be working hard with you to make the case and will also be exploring contingencies.  We’ve added an important new section to the website, “PASCAL Budget Information,” and have put up a link to a form, “How has PASCAL helped you?”  Please check the website for information periodically.  And, please embed and promote the testimonial link through your community and encourage people (especially students!) to tell us how we’ve helped them. Both links are on our front page.

We’ll be sending out more information about the new fees, as well as our plans for the upcoming year soon.

Thanks very much for your support!