Hi all. I'm having some big feels today and I thought, who better to commiserate with than Boundlings?

I work for a small public library in the US. We have been fighting our governing body on a monthly basis, begging them not to cut our funding, but last night our luck finally ran out. We will be losing roughly 1/3 of our total budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

As is the case in many other libraries worldwide, we're already operating on the thinnest margin possible, so bearing the brunt of such a sweeping reduction is going to HURT. Our staff members are underpaid and don't have benefits, our building hasn't been renovated in something like 60 years, and we don't have nearly enough space or money to consistently serve our patrons/community in the ways they deserve.

I'm not really going anywhere important with this thread - I just feel extremely disheartened, scared, and annoyed. An alarming percentage of the general public is functionally illiterate and you're eliminating LIBRARY FUNDING as your first line of defense?! What a world.......................