NYSHEI Executive Director Jason Kramer provided written and oral testimony to the New York State Legislative Joint Fiscal Committee during the hearing on the Higher Education portion of Governor Paterson’s budget proposal.

Mr. Kramer warned the Senators and Assembly members of the committee to be mindful of the importance of academic and research libraries to the quality of higher education but also to their role in the development of an innovation economy.

The written testimony, available here, stressed the need for the Academic Information Research Access (ARIA) Act and spoke of the significant return on investment of this bold private-public collaboration that would improve research, assist stressed library budgets, and spur economic growth.

In his oral testimony Mr. Kramer echoed the importance of ARIA, while also calling on lawmakers to support and restore existing library funding, particularly coordinated collection development (CCDA) funding.