The OLA Legislative Committee met earlier this week. Notes of interest include:

1. As today’s news shows, the state just released its most recent revenue forecast this week:  http://oregon.gov/DAS/OEA/revenue.shtml.  State agencies were asked to plan for three tiers of cuts, from 3.5% to 10.5%.  For the state library, money is targeted to come out of salary savings (so, already taken care of) and the Ready to Read grant program (at the 7% and 10.5% tiers).  For Research Services, each cut results in some loss of FTE; if the 7% cut is made, the Reference Room will be closed.
2. There will probably not be any legislation coming out of the recommendations from the Working Group on Libraries and Archives.
3. The coming legislative session will be largely focused on the budget with very few bills introduced by committees and individual legislators.  There will not be an OLA legislative day.  Efforts will be focused on meeting with legislators in their home districts in January, followed by a later coordinated calling and emailing campaign.  Stay tuned for details.
4. The county law libraries are working on negotiating a deal with EBSCO for electronic access to Nolo Press publications and are trying to figure out a way to make these resources available remotely, since the law libraries don’t issue library cards, so they need to figure out a way to authenticate users.