Minitex, eLibrary Minnesota and regional systems describe high digital use and funding pressures

Minitex and regional library leaders told the Senate Education Finance Committee that Minnesota’s cooperative library infrastructure — including interlibrary loan, statewide digital databases (eLibrary Minnesota), and cooperative purchasing — is widely used and under financial pressure from rising subscription costs.

"Minitex is a program of the Office of Higher Education housed at the University of Minnesota Libraries," Maggie Snow, director of Minitex, told the committee. She detailed Minitex services including MNLINK interlibrary loan, statewide delivery, digital collections and cooperative purchasing agreements with vendors.

Why it matters: Minitex aggregates resources and negotiating power for academic, public and school libraries. Snow reported Minitex receives about $1,400,000 in federal funding through the LSTA grants-to-states program administered by State Library Services, and she described ELM (eLibrary Minnesota) as a collection of more than 55 research and information databases used statewide. "Last year, curious Minnesotans searched ELM 55,000,000 times," Snow said.

University and regional library witnesses echoed the importance of statewide licensing. Kate Peterson, undergraduate services librarian at the University of Minnesota, said eLibrary Minnesota provides key databases used by high-school and first-year college students, including Academic Search Premier. "Without an increase, we will either see a loss of service within 2 years or cost being shifted exponentially to the local level," Peterson warned.

Regional public library administrators described how recent changes to the state funding formula have supported collections and staffing improvements. Karen Punczak, director of Great River Regional Library, said the 2023 funding changes helped systems boost outreach collections, update shelving and add staff positions, including floating positions to keep smaller branches open. "This investment in public libraries and the infrastructure, our people, and our materials are vital to serving the public in the 359 public libraries in all 87 counties of our state," she said.

Local library examples included expanded digital circulation and targeted outreach. Sarah Hawkins, assistant director at Anoka County Library and legislative chair for the Minnesota Library Association, highlighted statewide digital circulation figures: "In 2024, there were over 12,000,000 checkouts, making it the highest circulating digital collection worldwide for the fourth year in a row. We saw a 14% increase in checkouts over 2023." She also described patrons who used eLibrary Minnesota resources to prepare for EMT tests, locate medical information and succeed in college coursework.

Minitex leaders also described eBooks Minnesota — a K–8 subset and broader ebook collections — and the Minnesota Digital Library, which provides digitized photographs, maps and primary sources from more than 200 cultural heritage partners. Snow said ebooks Minnesota had almost 280,000 views in the prior year and that student checkouts in the collection rose 25% year over year.

Funding concerns centered on subscription inflation for core databases. Witnesses requested continued state support to preserve statewide access, arguing that without state-level contracts the cost burden would fall to individual districts and libraries.

The committee heard broad, cross-sector support from school-age students, K–12 and higher-education librarians and regional system directors for continued investment in statewide digital resources, cooperative purchasing and interlibrary loan services that extend library reach across the state.