[Note: This started as a comment on Susan Bernofsky's exhaustive post regarding the Central Library Plan and proposed sale of Brooklyn Heights, but it quickly became something else. (Sorry, Susan, if it seems like I'm picking on you. Yours is the last piece I read on this.)]
Hijacking an old blog I started when I was "freelancing" (read: unemployed) over six years ago is an admittedly strange way to weigh in on the controversies surrounding the sale of New York City public libraries, but I don't have another platform for my informal, unedited thoughts on the matter, and ever since publishing a report on the three library systems earlier this year I have come to have some thoughts.
My position is an awkward one because I share some of the concerns of those who have criticized the Central Library Plan and NYPL's handling of it, particularly Michael Kimmelman, but the vast majority of critics have been painting with such a large brush, indicting any and everything that involves the management of scarce resources, that my disagreements have started to eclipse everything else.
In fact, I disagree on so many different fronts that it's hard to know where to begin. I suppose I could
start with the electronic versus paper materials thing, since Bernofsky and others apparently
take this to be pretty close to the center of the controversies they're reporting on. The libraries are not abandoning paper materials. Paper books are
still a big part of the libraries’ rising circulations and will remain a
core service for the foreseeable future. Nobody is questioning that or doubting
that. The conflict at the heart of the Central Library Plan has only
incidentally to do with paper versus electronic materials and instead is all
about reallocating resources from the research library system to the branch
library system. As branch libraries serve primarily marginalized communities—including
low-education residents and immigrants—it would not be wrong to say that it is
about reallocating resources from the intellectual elite to the poor. (NYPL’s
point about scanning research holdings is meant to allay the concerns of
researchers who don’t want to wait for offsite books to be delivered.)
Next, pace Bernofsky, the politicians agitating against the Pacific and Brooklyn Heights
sales are not “big library advocates.” I think Letitia James and Stephen Levin
are both well-meaning representatives for their districts (and I agree with both on lots of things), but I have never
heard them speak out about library issues before now. It would be interesting
to see if either has supported their local branch using their discretionary
funds, particularly Levin whose district is home to a branch with over $8
million in capital needs.
The truth is, New York City’s
branch libraries have been systematically starved of funding for going on
decades now. The Brooklyn Public Library oversees 58 different branches and two
years ago received approximately $15 million in general capital allocations,
despite having over $230 million in maintenance needs. The system has built
only one new branch in over 15 years, and almost all of the other branches are
in middling to bad shape. Dozens of them have leaks and temperamental HVACs and
have to shut down for days every summer while some contractor uses duct tape to
get the mechanical equipment working again. When problems get to the breaking
point and it’s either shut the building down or renovate modestly, then the
systems can typically raise additional capital funds from the discretionary budgets
of City Council members, Borough Presidents and the Mayor. A really savvy
system like Queens that has created deep relationships with well-connected
politicians can dip into discretionary funds to make investments before
conditions deteriorate, but mostly the libraries go from one crisis to the
next, because that’s the only way they can get representatives to use their
extremely limited funds on libraries instead of the thousand other things they
see appeals for every year. The system has worked like this for decades, mind
you, and until recently there has been no indication that it would change.
Ironically, given the outcry, the three systems have started to break out of
their boxes a little bit to come up with innovative ways of raising tons of
capital. The libraries are typically thrilled if they can get one or two
million from a local representative; $100 million is an enormous windfall that
could fund a couple of brand new buildings and still help a half-dozen others
overcome huge physical constraints. There are other benefits to the sales as
well. I’ll just go ahead and provide three pretty strong ones:
1. Co-locating branches in
towers would be an effective way to cut down on future capital debts and
maintenance costs, and so lesson the system’s reliance on an essentially unreliable
funding system. I’m sorry but this is not “corporatese,” as Bernofsky and others have dismissively characterized, it is responsible
management.
2. Lots of people may find the
Carnegie buildings charming--and perhaps there are a number that deserve to be
saved on preservation grounds--but, despite the ambiguities of the English word, the libraries are not their buildings. And a lot of the 206 branch library buildings in New York City are not only extremely expensive to maintain, they’re
not particularly suited to the services patrons need or want (more on that in a
sec).
3. A lot of the branch buildings
are in undesirable areas of the city: the 125th Street branch, for
example, sits next to an entrance ramp to the FDR in an area of Harlem that few
pedestrians want to be; there are a bunch of autobody shops and empty lots
surrounding an otherwise extremely charming Carnegie façade. The Brownsville
branch, meanwhile, is surrounded on all sides by enormous NYCHA towers and
occupies a kind of no-man’s land that many residents find threatening and even
unsafe. There are lots of others like this.
Although I am not
heartbroken about offsite storage and think greatly benefiting the poor with
more literacy programming and computer access may ultimately be worth a fairly
small inconvenience to researchers, I too have concerns about the Central Library
Plan. Kimmelman convinced me that the cost overruns may be too risky. I also
think Donnell was suboptimal and that the BAM library shouldn’t be considered
as a replacement for Pacific (whatever happens to the building). Moreover, I
agree with many advocates that selling off city property should be undertaken
with extreme caution, and I would love it if the libraries and city could find
a way for the public to play a much larger role in the planning process. As
detailed in this N+1 piece on the Central Library Plan, past NYPL presidents have not always made the
brightest investments, and public input would not only serve to legitimize
their decisions it may very well improve the designs for new libraries.
However, I also think all
three library systems desperately need to rethink how they deliver services and
that it is not a betrayal of their mission or Carnegie’s mission or liberalism
in general if they sell off old buildings in service of a new model. The loss
in square footage should not be an overriding consideration, despite attempts
by opponents to use this as a proxy for lost “public space” and encroaching
privatization. I mean I get how attractive that is, but in this case it’s
really not very relevant. One of the most popular branches in the entire city
is a third of the size of the proposed replacement branch for Brooklyn Heights,
7,000 square feet versus 20,000 square feet. All things being equal, 20,000 square feet
should be plenty of space for a dynamic library in tony Brooklyn Heights. It
will be plenty of space for the new Donnell library too, which serves an even
more upscale neighborhood and will be barely ten blocks away from Mid-Manhattan
(NYPL’s central branch library) and 42nd Street (NYPL’s central
research library). I mean stop and re-read that for a second, people.
Contrary to the electronic
versus paper frame everybody likes to read into these debates, the biggest
change the libraries have experienced over the last ten years (as documented in "Branches of Opportunity" at great length) is the incredible rise in demand for public
programs. These include everything from lap baby and parenting programs to
dance classes and chess clubs, but at their core are literacy classes: i.e.
basic reading and writing instruction, English language workshops, and a wide
variety of computer classes. They have also started to introduce lots of
classes for people who are searching for jobs, so things like resume writing
and interviewing instruction, searching techniques and now even job placement
services. Tens of thousands of people attend these programs for free every year
and the demand for them is getting out of hand…really, there are long waiting
lists for this kind of thing. In part, this is because employers increasingly
want people with basic literacy and computer skills, and most people still learn
more effectively through face-to-face instruction. (Libraries are also the only
non-institutional resource most people have access to—i.e. participants don’t
have to enroll or pay tuition; nobody asks where you live or if you’re a citizen.)
But the libraries are also having trouble accommodating the demand for
programming because most traditional branches were not made for classes and
group work. Most of them were built for quiet, solitary readers and book
storage. In a lot of branches, the classes happen in cramped little spaces that
look like they were originally intended as utility closets (seriously, this how
it looks at McKinley Park in Dyker Heights). By contrast, the newer libraries
are able to handle group work while still allowing for solitary reading and
research. Smaller commercial spaces in retail corridors are also being
considered because they can be useful places for programming and have extremely
low overhead. Since patrons now have the ability to order any book in the
system and have it delivered to their closest branch, not every branch building
needs a ton of books. These are the kind of decisions we want our libraries to
be making: how to deliver the best services to the most people.
