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After years of staff shortages and budget cuts, the Hawaii State Public Library System could lose funding for 37 hard-to-fill positions next year, which could lead to reduced branch hours and fewer resources for the public.

The Department of Budget and Finance plans to cut funding in 2025 for all state jobs vacant since 2020. Many of the library’s positions at risk were subject to a hiring freeze for two years during the pandemic and haven’t been filled since, in part because of a drawn out process for hiring librarians and other staff members.

Removing 37 vacant positions from Hawaii’s library system would put a permanent strain on existing workers and make it more difficult to keep local branches open, particularly in rural communities, State Librarian Stacey Aldrich said.

Hawaii libraries have been struggling to recover from budget cuts made during the pandemic, with some branches needing to temporarily close on days when they’re short-staffed. All but three libraries in Hawaii are closed on Sundays, and on the outer islands, some libraries are closed weekdays, too. The Hana Library on Maui is only open to the public on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. 

In a recent presentation to the Board of Education, Aldrich said she plans to request $2 million from the Legislature to keep the positions in her budget and give her team more time to hire new employees. The Hawaii library system operates 51 branches across the state, has over 550 employees and last year recorded 1.3 million visits.

The Legislature will consider department requests early next year and finalize the state’s budget in the spring. The state library system is asking for an operating budget of roughly $50 million.

Aldrich did not respond to questions about which positions are on the chopping block. But in a to the education board, she said vacancies have particularly affected rural libraries and the Hawaii State Library in downtown Honolulu, which needs the most staff to oversee its large collection of books and materials.  

Most libraries are facing vacancies, but it’s easier to shift staff between branches on Oahu to prevent locations from temporarily closing.

“The loss of these vacancies will permanently impact the operations of the Hawaii State Library, which is the flagship library for our statewide public library system and the operations for the public library system as a whole,” Aldrich said in the memo. 

A Struggling Library System

In addition to more time to hire staff, Aldrich and her team say they need help keeping existing staff safe and maintaining aging facilities.

Since the start of the year, Aldrich said, employees have reported more than 600 security incidents ranging from property damage to disruptive behavior from patrons, including two physical assaults on library staff. She plans to request $1.2 million to help cover the costs of a new security guard service.

“Everything that we’re looking at is really ensuring that our spaces are safe for people and that we have enough staff to provide services,” Aldrich said.

Keeping up with construction and repairs has also been a challenge for the library system, where 60% of its buildings are over 50 years old. Over the past two years, lawmakers removed $10 million from the library’s construction budget, significantly delaying projects, Mallory Fujitani, special assistant to the state librarian, told the Board of Education last week.

Aldrich is requesting roughly $28 million to accelerate projects such as repairing elevators and air conditioning units, renovating older branches and building new libraries.

But staffing still remains one of the largest concerns for libraries. In a of library employees, almost a third said hiring more staff would help them better serve the public.

Hiring Can Take Up To A Year

Since the 37 positions are already vacant, libraries may not feel the immediate impact of the proposed cuts, said Nainoa Mau, executive director of . But Mau said the state library should be given more time to fill these positions.

It can take up to a year to fill a library job, largely due to processing delays in the Department of Human Resources Development, which oversees hiring for the state library system. While the state has a qualified pool of librarians with master’s degrees from the University of Hawaii, the lengthy hiring process can be frustrating for new graduates, said Tisha Aragaki, who worked at the Hawaii State Library until 2019.

Sometimes recent graduates go to the mainland to find jobs because they can’t afford to stay in Hawaii for months without a job offer, added Aragaki, who now works as an assistant archivist at the Uluulu Archive at UH West Oahu. 

Hiring was paused during the pandemic when lawmakers cut more than $4.6 million from the state library’s operating budget. While the state restored funding for the library’s staff last year, challenges persist.

According to the , the state library only hired three new employees in 2021, then 49 last year. But even as hiring surged, more than 90 employees left their jobs or moved to other positions in the library department, the greatest amount of change since 2019.

The hiring freeze had noticeable impacts on local libraries, which continued to operate throughout the pandemic by offering pick-up services for books and providing limited Internet and computer access. In 2020, Aldrich reported to the Board of Education that cuts in budget and staff would reduce local branches’ hours and hinder their ability to circulate books and other materials across the state.

“Now more than ever, as Hawaii seeks to endure and recover from the pandemic and economic crisis, our families and community will need access to free, publicly-funded resources,” Aldrich wrote at the time. 

If the Legislature follows through on its plans to cut 37 positions from the library’s budget next year, Aldrich said, local branches would receive fewer resources. For example, she said, two of the positions subject to cuts are island managers who train librarians and can temporarily fill in at branches. 

Already, Aragaki said, small branches may be running on a small staff of perhaps five people, including a janitor, yet try their best to connect the community with valuable resources and programs.

“It’s pretty exhausting,” Aragaki said. 

Sunny Pai, president of the Hawaii Library Association, said continued worker shortages and cuts to positions may create more frustrations for existing staff. Librarians are well-trained to offer a range of services, from basic computer skills to research tutorials, but they can’t do their jobs if they’re lacking support and staff, Pai added. 

“We help people help themselves,” she said.

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.