What's Happening In…Public Libraries

Amid a week of celebrations, the new $70 million, 325,000 square foot Central Library of the Memphis–Shelby County Public Library & Information Center opened November 10, with far more space, seats, computers and twice as much material on publicly accessible shelves as the old building. Only several weeks later did one of dozens of quotations inscribed outside begin to raise a stir. "Workers of the world, unite!," from the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, was deemed inappropriate by two local county commissioners and one city councilman, as well as hundreds of residents. The directors of the library and the UrbanArt Commission, which commissioned the sidewalk art, say that the quote is one of an enormous variety of words, images, and symbols. "I was thinking about the piece in its entirety," said Library Director Judith Drescher, adding that the artists "wanted people to be curious, to think, to find out more when they weren't sure." The critics, who first asked that the quote be sandblasted, have since asked for another work to "commemorate the wreckage of communism." So far, the arts commission has stood firm. Letters to the editor of the local newspaper have been evenly divided.

The Central Arkansas Library System Board of Trustees, Little Rock, has voted to adopt the Living Wage policy for employees making lower incomes. Accordingly, all staffers working at least 20 hours a week will be paid no less than $8.75 an hour, increasing to $9 in July. System Director Bobby Roberts said the new policy will assist roughly one-third of the library's staff. "I'm a believer that we should have higher wages in the state," Roberts said. "Enforcing this policy will make the library better off in the long run because we'll save money by reducing turnover, which increases recruitment, training, and supervisory costs to the library."

The Brooklyn Public Library has received $3.9 million from former Borough President Howard Golden to fund the construction of a center to house the Brooklyn Collection, an archive of Brooklyn history on the second floor of the library's main Grand Army Plaza facility. "The Brooklyn Collection is the premier collection of 20th-century Brooklyn materials," according to Judy Walsh, chief of the collection. It houses a full range of materials, from the late 19th century to the present day, and includes books, prints, maps, and photographs. A centerpiece of the Brooklyn Collection is material from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Brooklyn's leading daily newspaper. A recent National Leadership Grant for $239,412 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services will enable digitization of, and online access to, the first 62 years of the Eagle. It will be the first project in the United States not only to digitize a historic daily paper but also to make its full text searchable through an innovative optical character recognition technology and provide free web-based access. The project is scheduled for completion by 2005.

After the measure had been defeated twice in the past, voters on the North Shore of Long Island, NY, in December approved the formation of a special library district that will include several towns. The new tax will fund library service to patrons living where no public funding was included in taxes. In the past, residents essentially have had to buy library cards in neighboring areas. New York State passed a law in 2000 declaring that libraries could not sell services to patrons who lived outside their boundaries, leaving these citizens in library limbo. The newly approved tax will cost homeowners roughly $69 a year.

Seattle City Librarian Deborah Jacobs has won a 2001 National Council of Teachers of English/Support for the Learning and Teaching of English Affiliate Intellectual Freedom Award. Jacobs was selected for her unyielding opposition to censorship. When serving as the director of Oregon's Corvallis-Benton County Public Library, Jacobs successfully squelched a ballot measure that would have banned books by or about homosexuals from library shelves, while also stocking titles defending both Christian right and antigay philosophies. Jacobs previously was honored as LJ's Librarian of the Year in 1994. "It's important to be honored by people outside of our profession for the work that all librarians and library workers consider core to our mission," Jacobs told LJ.

The Dover Public Library, DE, has received a $100,000 bequest, but the library isn't sure who to thank, Director Sheila Anderson told LJ. The man who bequeathed the money died more than 90 years ago. Technically, the gift came from the Herbert B. Reynolds Trust but apparently was bequeathed by Robert J. Reynolds, the 49th Governor of Delaware, who served from 1891 to 1895 and died in 1909. Why it took 92 years for the money to make its way to the library is a mystery. Anderson is happily accepting the donation regardless of whom it came from. According to the library, "Most of the funds will be preserved for future projects," but some of the new money will be immediately applied to help with the current renovation of the children's department. The library's Friends group raised a portion of the cash needed for the children's department, but the Reynolds money will greatly buttress those funds.