Budget cuts proposed by Gov. David Paterson threaten to trim the Department of Education's Office of Library Services a whopping 40 percent, according to Library Services Director Barbara Stripling.

"These cuts are so huge we can't get our head around it. I don't know what we're going to do," Stripling said by telephone this morning. Cutting library funds when times are hard ends up hurting the very kids the state and city aim to help, because families can't afford to buy books, she said. "What's scary to me, is that this is what our kids need now. Across the country, libraries are having a tough time just when their use is most needed."

"You can't cut a vital service to kids by 40 percent," said Stripling. "This will decimate Library Services. Nobody can survive a 40 percent cut."

Despite state mandates that require a library in every public school, only about 75 percent of the city's public schools now have libraries, Stripling says. Many small schools that share campuses are being encouraged to develop 'campus' libraries, to share both the resources and the financial burden of a school library. Stripling says generous donors like Macy's, which made a $271,000 grant for middle-school reading this year, give her hope. But a quarter of a million dollars won't go far in stanching a 40 percent budget gouge.

Stripling, who says she's known in her office for making lemonade from bad-news lemons, says "I truly believe they just don't understand what they've proposed -- that they've thought about the fact that it's 40 percent of our budget. I think it's going to work out. I hope!"

For those inclined to do more -- for anyone who got happily lost in a school library or had a great childhood librarian (thank you, Mrs. Owens) -- there's a petition gathering names to protest the proposed cuts.