NYPL Launches Fund-raising Campaign

One key objective of the campaign is to support the annual New York State Summer Reading Program. To that end, Scholastic has already donated 35,000 giveaway books, and Yahoo! has contributed funds, as well as 300,000 postcards that will be mailed to children's homes as part of an outreach effort. The money will also fund teen, poetry, and writing workshops, author/illustrator visits, and other children's programs. The campaign has, to date, raised $4.5 million from the Carnegie Corporation and $1.5 million from the Starr Foundation, in addition to other generous donations.

Although NYPL already receives private funding each year to supplement its $200 million operating costs, it wasn't enough to offset the $31 million in city and state budget cuts for FY 2003–2004, Oyama says. NYPL, which has 89 branches in Manhattan, Staten Island, and the Bronx, in addition to four research libraries, has already slashed 40 percent of its materials budget and cut back its days of operation to five days a week at most branches. Together with the Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens Borough Public Library, the three library systems hope to raise $36 million. Some 40 million people visit New York's three library systems each year.