To solve a budget crisis created by the end of state funding of school libraries, the upcoming La Caņada High School Back-to-School Night will feature a fundraiser to support the library. The "Buy a Book" campaign is being launched Sept. 27-28 as a coordinated effort by the LCHS PTSA and the 7/8 PTA to help close the large budget gap left when the state of California stopped providing $50,000 annually to LCHS for the purchase of books and reference materials, according to Judy Baldwin.

"The library, known as the IRC (Information Resource Center), is a joint-use facility shared with the community of La Caņada Flintridge. It used to receive funding every year from the state of California, but for the past three years that amount has been reduced to zero," Baldwin said. "Schools all over California are scrambling to find private funds to make up the gap."

According to the American Library Association, a ratio of 22 books per student for school libraries is recommended, but the LCHS library presently has only 10 books per student. When the new IRC building was completed in 2002, the library staff had to remove outdated and damaged books from the collection, but little money was available to replenish the stacks.

"Here we have this beautiful building on the outside, but inside we really need help," said Terri Rothe, a parent with three children at the junior high and high school.

To make up for the lack of reference and research books, librarians Lindsay Bozzani and Ann Omae subscribe to two state-of-the-art, online research databases, E-library and Galenet. These databases provide students with access to innumerable research books, newspapers and scholarly journals, and are used extensively by 7-12 students for their research. The $10,000 annual subscriptions for these databases will run out at the end of the year without help from parents.

The PTA is asking parents to visit their "Buy a Book" booths in the IRC and the auditorium at Back -to-School Night to purchase a book for the library or contribute to the Database Fund to help raise money to renew the online subscriptions.