Editorial: Two NYPLs or One?

When I was a kid, long before I knew the distinction between the Research Libraries and the Branch Libraries of New York Public Library (NYPL), you could still go to the big Beaux Arts building on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue to borrow books or work on the more rigorous middle school/high school papers, as well as to the local branches. By the time my children were in school, the popular lending library at what I thought of as the “Main” library on 42nd Street was long gone, and for schoolwork we went mostly to the “central” libraries: the Donnell Library Center (to take advantage of a wonderful children's library) and the Mid-Manhattan Library.

Now, happily, many of those old branches in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island (which comprise NYPL's Branch Libraries) have been renovated. Less happily, the building that housed Donnell has been sold to make way for a hotel and a much smaller public library; a street-level floor and two floors underground in the new hotel will emerge in 2011 (see News, LJ 12/07, p. 25). With the proposed library having less than half the space for public services as the old Donnell (19,000 square feet as opposed to the current 43,000), questions remain about the location of some of the collections, including the children's library and world languages collection. As one former staffer said, “There's only so much room in the Research Libraries” to house these collections. More importantly, the breakup of the collections diminishes the role of Donnell as a central library for everything from popular fiction and nonfiction to AV, graphic novels, and much, much more.

Meanwhile, rumors have been flying for several years that Mid-Manhattan, on the other side of Fifth Avenue from the landmark institution (now named the Humanities and Social Sciences Library) also will be sold, given the high cost of upgrades and the increasingly valuable piece of land. It never was a beautiful building, but it's a highly used central library, fulfilling a role that the rich 42nd Street library can't, serving as a popular mecca for thousands of people who work in the area as well as a place for job hunters, small business owners, and others to find assistance and resources. Circulation at both Donnell and Mid-Manhattan continues to rise.

Adding credence to the rumors about the sale of Mid-Manhattan, technical services staff from the library (and two other locations) will move to a new, combined tech services facility in Long Island City, Queens, emptying one floor of the building. And telephone reference is reportedly moving across the street to the Humanities Library, too.

The decisions have come in the wake of lengthy, costly studies by two consulting firms to improve services and reorganize staff. While some of those decisions are wise—one catalog for the Research Libraries and Branch Libraries—they have been communicated to staff (and in the case of Donnell, to the public) largely after the big decisions have been made. Even the New York Times, which sometimes has covered NYPL critically, gave the library a pass in its story on the sale of Donnell, failing to report the shrinking of the library. Is the library getting the best deal? Will NYPL achieve improved and accessible services with the money reaped from property sales?

Should a public/private entity like NYPL—private fundraising and a huge endowment funds the Research Libraries, but the city funds the Branch Libraries—so blithely sidestep public and staff input? Vincent Gentile, Libraries Subcommittee chair of the New York City Council, told LJ that he was “a little disconcerted” that the council didn't know about the Donnell sale ahead of time. The city council has already heard from people who work at the library and from the union. “It's troubling to us,” said Gentile, who had a meeting scheduled with NYPL president Paul LeClerc for mid-January, in terms of what will happen to workers, “convenience for the community, and the whole mission of the library.”

To those of us who live in New York City, it's troubling, too. It's way past time for NYPL leaders to come out from behind their cloak of secrecy, unveil their plans for the library, and get staff and public feedback before making any other sweeping changes.