Budgeting and Budget Control in Public Libraries

United States are supported by appropriations. While appropriations are supplemented with state and federal aid, fees and fines, and other receipts, all funds are generally combined for budgeting purposes. Special trust and endowment income is excluded, of course. The ap-propriation process requires library budgeting of one type or another. The yield from special library taxes, which is ordinarily a predictable amount, is the second most frequent source of library revenue. In spite of the fixity of this kind of income, libraries supported in this manner are being required more and more by law to prepare annual budgets. Theoretically, in order to prepare an annual budget the source of li-brary income has no effect upon the library’s obligation for proper financial management, Early literature implied that the library administrator was sup-posed to have the most direct hand in the preparation of the annual budget. This implication was verified a decade later by the McDiar-mids, who made a survey of library management for their book on administration.2 They found that size of library reff ected the pattern as to which persons prepared the budget. In libraries having fewer than 75 staff members, the librarian was often assisted in the budget-making activity by members or a committee from the board of trustees. Whenever staff reached beyond 75 members and up to 300, board participation was almost nonexistent and the librarian was assisted in budgeting and financial control by an assistant librarian or administra-tive specialist. For staffs of over 300 the librarian and the financial assistant had exclusive control of this activity. A current survey3 of municipalities of over 10,000 population that operate libraries shows, among 710 cities reporting, the followin