Our Library as a Symbol

The Los Angeles Central Library has been closed since an April fire destroyed 370,000 books and vast areas of the stacks that held them. Not only has Los Angeles been deprived of its library, but people from all over California have lost reference services and interlibrary loans from what is really a statewide resource. The Central Library now also becomes a symbol of Sacramento’s role in library construction--a role that the Legislature can help fill by putting a vitally needed $100-million library bond measure on the ballot.

The bond measure, sponsored by Sen. Barry Keene (D-Benicia), perished earlier this summer during a fight between Assembly Republicans and other legislators over how many bond measures to put on the ballot and the state’s role in financing libraries. Keene’s allies in the Assembly will try to revive it today.

The Los Angeles fire damaged about 15% of the library’s storage area; thousands of water-soaked books were frozen and will be slowly thawed and dried to try to save them. Damage in the library is uneven--one room no more cluttered than might be the case with normal inventory, another filled with charred books and shelf-brackets, twisted by intense heat. Several hundred staff members are still at work, months after the fire, taking inventory and preparing to move books, magazines and other library holdings to temporary quarters that should be open to the public next spring. Then the old building will be closed and the work of restoring this statewide resource will begin.

A new eight-story building will go up on the east side of the old library, financed by the sale of the library parking lot and its development rights as well as by Community Redevelopment Agency bonds. But $20 million to $25 million will still be needed to restore the old building and create a new rare-books area--particularly costly undertakings when architects and engineers must work with a historic building constructed of concrete and steel. The library bond bill contains no specific amount for the Central Library, but the measure specifies that Los Angeles should receive special consideration.

The Los Angeles Central Library is only an extreme example of the help that libraries all over the state need. What helps one area ultimately helps the entire state, because knowledge knows no county barriers. The Legislature should not erect barriers, either, but should allow voters to decide whether to preserve their library system.