[BHC] Plan of Action Released

[John P. DuLong]

Hello Folks,

OK, my vacation and training are over and I am back in the saddle and ready
to run.  Now lets get serious about this usage fee issue.

In this email I will enclose three documents: (1) the letter I am sending to
Ms. DiChiera, the current president of the Detroit Library Commission; (2)
the letter I am sending to Ms. Skowronski, the director of the Detroit
Public Library; and (3) our plan of action.  Please note that the plan of
action has been modified to take into account some of your recommendations.

PLEASE, do NOT take any of the steps in the plan of action until we hear
back from the library.  It is still my hope that they back down.  But come 1
August 2004, if this policy is not rescinded, then I will let all of you
know it is time to go into action and start our donation boycott.

Also, please do not assume that the donation boycott is the only action we
will take.  I am planning a series of escalating projects we can engage in.
However, I do not want to rush them all out at once.  It would only serve to
exhaust both you and I.  The sad truth is that if this usage fee is not
rescinded, then I think we are in for a long struggle, longer than our past
struggles with the library administration.  But folks just keep in mind we
have won most of our fights in the past and I think we can also do so now.

Here are the three documents:

**********

Advocates for the Burton Historical Collection


18 July 2004

Ms. Karen DiChiera, President
Detroit Library Commission
5201 Woodward Ave.
Detroit, MI 48202


Dear Ms. DiChiera:

On behalf of the Advocates for the Burton Historical Collection, I am
officially registering our protest of the special collections usage fee that
the Detroit Library Commissioners adopted on 15 June 2004.  Enclosed you
will find the Plan of Action we have endorsed and will follow if this unfair
usage fee is not rescinded before 1 August 2004.  I have also enclosed a
copy of a letter to Ms. Skowronski, the Director of the Detroit Public
Library, proposing that we negotiate a compromise.

Please understand that we do not oppose a borrowing fee.  This is a
reasonable regulation and had been approved in the past by the Michigan
Attorney General.   However, we have been unable to find a single example of
a public library in Michigan or elsewhere in the United States charging
patrons a fee for using a special collection.  Such a usage fee would be a
dangerous precedent that all historical and genealogical societies in the
United States would find objectionable.  Furthermore, it would appear to
contradict the 1963 state of Michigan constitution, art. 8, sec. 9, which
states:

	The legislature shall provide by law for the establishment and support of
public 	libraries which shall be available to all residents of the state
under regulations 	adopted by the governing bodies thereof.

A usage fee is simply an unreasonable regulation and runs the risk of being
viewed as a tax by the Attorney General.  We will be asking our state
senators and representatives to approach Mr. Michael Cox, the current
Attorney General, and ask him to render an opinion on the constitutionality
of a usage fee.

Please rescind this unwise and very likely unconstitutional policy so that
we can stop working at cross-purposes and start working on having the
legislature restore the necessary state funding.

Sincerely,



John P. DuLong, Ph.D.
Advocates for the
Burton Historical Collection
959 Oxford Road
Berkley, MI 48072-2011

(313) 916-2550, work
(248) 541-2894, home
(313) 874-4730, fax
dulongj at habitant.org
http://habitant.org/bhc

**********

Advocates for the Burton Historical Collection


18 July 2004


Ms. Nancy Skowronski
Director
Detroit Public Library
5201 Woodward Ave.
Detroit, MI 48202


Dear Ms. Skowronski:

On behalf of the Advocates for the Burton Historical Collection, I am
officially registering our protest of the special collections usage fee that
the Detroit Library Commissioners adopted on 15 June 2004.  Enclosed you
will find the Plan of Action we have endorsed and will follow if this unfair
usage fee is not rescinded before 1 August 2004.  A copy of this letter and
the Plan of Action are also being sent to Ms. DiChiera, the President of the
Detroit Library Commission.

The imposition of this usage fee will only drive patrons away from the
Burton Historical Collection and the other special collections.  The library
will not raise even a fraction of the monies needed to replace the lost
state funding.  This move will alienate non-Detroiter patrons who are not
only the most numerous users of the special collections but also the
majority of donors to the library.  There are a number of reasons that make
this usage fee unwise and very little reason to think that it will ever
benefit the library and its Detroit patrons.

I deeply regret having to engage in a donation boycott and I would hope that
there is still time to avoid it.   It would be far better for the patrons
and your administration to have all of us working together to restore the
state funding than to have us at odds with one another.  In that spirit, I
would suggest we meet to discuss a possible compromise.

Perhaps something could be worked out with the following principles as
starting points:

1.	That until the Michigan constitutionality of charging a usage fee is
determined, that the library request donations from the patrons for using
the special collections.  We would like to see a sliding scale for donations
taking into account one time users, senior citizens, non-resident Detroit
property owners, and others falling under special circumstances.

2.	If, and only if, it is proven to be constitutional, should this voluntary
donation be turned into a required fee.

3.	That all the raised donations/fees should be spent exclusively on the
Burton Historical Collection and the other special collections.

4.	That an annual report be made to the public documenting how the collected
money was spent to benefit the Burton Historical Collections and special
collections.

5.	That the making of a donation beyond $50 would automatically include
registration with the Friends of the Detroit Public Library and/or Friends
of the Burton Historical Collection.

6.	That the Advocates join with the efforts of the library administration
and the Friends of the Detroit Public Library to re-establish the state
funding.

I think you will find people more willing to cooperate with a donation
campaign than a fee.  Several people have told me that they would only feel
comfortable contributing if they were assured the funds would be used on the
special collections.

Please understand that whatever the result of our discussions, I would still
have to take back any proposals to the Advocates and ask them to endorse
them.

I will call you when I return from my vacation on the week of 12 July 2004
to see if we can arrange a meeting for the purpose of hammering out a
mutually beneficial agreement.  I am sure you share my concern to avoid a
donation boycott, but unless an alternative is found that satisfies the
patrons, or the usage fee is dropped, I fear that a donation boycott is
inevitable.

Sincerely,




John P. DuLong, Ph.D.
Advocates for the
Burton Historical Collection
959 Oxford Road
Berkley, MI 48072-2011

(313) 916-2550, work
(248) 541-2894, home
(313) 874-4730, fax
dulongj at habitant.org
http://habitant.org/bhc


*********

Plan of Action to Protest the Detroit Public Library Access Fee

The Detroit Library Commission has failed to realize that the majority of
Burton Historical Collection patrons not only come from the suburbs and from
out-state Michigan, but also are major financial contributors to the Detroit
Public Library.  The non-Detroit patrons of the Burton Historical
Collection, individually and through the societies they belong to, have
donated funds, equipment, volunteer hours, expertise, historical materials,
and family records to the library for decades.  We have written and spoken
about the value of the Burton Historical Collection to audiences across the
nation and internationally and have encouraged people to use and support the
collection.  Why should we continue to support and be generous to a library
that excludes us?

Given the removal of state funding, we understand the need for a borrowing
fee to support this program for non-Detroiters, but an access fee is simply
punitive.  Moreover, we have been unable to find a single example of a
public library in the United States of America that charges a usage fee.

The Detroit Public Library lost their state funding—in large part due to
scandals surrounding the mismanagement of grants and donations—and is now
taking it out on non-residents who have been the most vocal supporters of
the Burton Historical Collection and the library in general.  Furthermore,
this usage fee was decided without consulting the patrons, the Friends of
the Burton Historical Collections, knowledgeable library staff, or the
affected organizations.

This usage fee will not be an effective way to replace the lost state
funding, but it certainly will generate much bad publicity for the Detroit
Public Library.

In order to impress upon the Detroit Library Commission and the Detroit
Public Library administration the seriousness of our objection to this
unfair usage fee, we believe it is now necessary to engage in a donation
boycott.

If the access fee is imposed on the non-Detroit patrons of the Detroit
Public Library on 1 August 2004, then we pledge to take the following
actions starting on that date:

1.	Although most of us will not pay the fee and will do our research
elsewhere, for those of us who absolutely must use the Burton Historical
Collection—due to the nature of our research—we will do so under protest and
will formally complain to the Detroit Library Commission.

2.	Those of us who belong to the Friends of the Detroit Public Library will
resign and refuse to renew our memberships.

3.	We will refuse to personally donate any funds whatsoever to the Detroit
Public Library.

4.	We will refuse to participate in any fund raising programs the Detroit
Public Library engages in.  We will not volunteer to help with any of these
programs.  We will encourage others not to cooperate with the library.

5.	We will encourage others not to donate to the library.  This includes
making a special effort to contact past individual contributors who have
made large contributions.  We will write to the major corporate donors to
the Detroit Public Library and ask them to no longer financially support the
library.

6.	We will contact societies we belong to that have contributed in the past
and ask them to withhold any further donations.  We will ask organizations
that have donated materials to the Burton Historical Collection in the past,
with the clear understanding that they would be open to the public, to
demand the return of these materials.  We will encourage them to donate
these materials to other institutions.

7.	We will strongly encourage people not to donate historical and
genealogical materials to the Burton Historical Collection and instead to
donate them to other worthy collections in the state.

8.	We will coordinate our efforts with the patrons of the National
Automotive History Collection, the E. Azalia Hackley Collection, the Great
Lakes Patent and Trademark Center, the Map Collection, and the Rare Book
Collection.  We will ask them to join us in our donation boycott.  We will
also make a special effort to reach out to our Detroit friends and ask them
to understand our position and support us.

9.	We will distribute this plan of action across the Internet to every
historical and genealogical group with an interest in the Burton Historical
Collection and ask them to join our effort and spread the word to their
members.

10.	We will publicly protest this policy and attract media attention to our
cause.

When the access fee is rescinded we will cease these actions and resume our
past support of the Detroit Public Library.  Also, we will vigorously
support any efforts to reinstate state funding to the Detroit Public Library
as we have done in the past.

In essence we are calling for a donation boycott of the Detroit Public
Library.  We do not want to do this and it is in the interest of the library
that this boycott not be initiated at all.  Once a boycott starts, even when
it results in success and is called off, there is usually a long lasting and
damaging fall off in donations that takes years to rebuild.

The Detroit Library Commission has until 1 August 2004 to rescind the access
fee on the non-Detroiters.

*********

Regards,

JP

John P. DuLong, Ph.D.
Acadian and French Canadian Genealogy
959 Oxford Road
Berkley, MI 48072-2011
USA
(248) 541-2894
dulongj at habitant.org