State librarian asks for $2.5M contingency and targeted investments for digitization, aid and prison libraries

Natalie Curry, executive director of the Oklahoma Department of Libraries and state librarian, told the House A&B education subcommittee that the department has five budget requests to sustain statewide services and improve access to archives and public-library services.

Curry said the department’s primary concern is continuity of federally funded statewide resources administered through the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). She described a contingency request of just over $2,527,240 to maintain statewide subscriptions and grants if federal funding were interrupted. Curry said that allotment breaks down to roughly $1,900,000 for core shared services (EBSCO, Brainfuse, OCLC/WorldCat and interlibrary loan capabilities) and about $588,050 in pass-through subgrants to public libraries for youth and literacy programs.

Curry asked the committee for a one-time $500,000 to process and digitize the governor’s papers in the state archives, noting that only about 10% of the archives collection is available online and that, at current staffing levels, in-house digitization would take more than two decades.

Other requests included a recurring $178,005 to raise the minimum state aid payment to libraries from $1,300 to $4,000 (the change would affect roughly 98 libraries currently below the proposed minimum), a recurring $126,050 to implement pay-for-performance and move state salaries closer to market rate, and $50,000 for the State Correctional Institution Library program to add nearly 4,000 books across 35 facilities.

Curry emphasized the state’s 'Digital Prairie' initiative — the suite of statewide online resources and digital archival collections — and said Oklahomans accessed those foundational resources more than 96,500,000 times last year. She argued that statewide procurement delivers significant cost savings versus individual institutions purchasing subscriptions: according to the department’s vendor analysis, if each school and library procured the service independently the cost could be many times higher.

Committee members asked clarifying questions about digitization timelines, how local libraries select materials, and the cost dynamics for ebooks. Curry reiterated that collection-development decisions are made locally under library board policies and explained that ebook licensing (per-checkout or time-limited access) drives higher per-item costs for libraries relative to print purchases.

Curry also noted that, at the federal level, the appropriations process for IMLS had passed both the U.S. House and Senate at the time of her remarks, but she presented the contingency to protect services in case funding changed.

The committee recessed for lunch after Curry’s presentation and questions.