APLEN Moving on...
The word is out. "Hello all, I wanted to let all the Directors and Chairs of each of our 16 resource-sharing ‘nodes’ know that Municipal Affairs is changing how we fund The Alberta Library (TAL) and the Alberta Public Library Electronic Network (APLEN). I met with TAL/APLEN this morning to inform them of this decision. During the process of Results-Based Budgeting, it has been decided that MA will no longer provide funding to TAL to manage the APLEN program. MA will still provide operating funding to TAL to ensure the organization can continue to do cross-sector work in the pursuit of seamless access across all libraries in the Province. Of course, MA has also just provided nearly $1 million of funding for all public libraries and all TAL members to join WorldCat/OCLC so we can have a robust provincial library catalogue. This recent decision to transition funding for APLEN back into PLSB is separate from that initiative. The $1.5 million per year of funding for APLEN wil