NEWPORT BEACH : Libraries No Longer Hush-Hush Affair

Dorothea Sheely remembers the days when the Spanish-style Balboa Library with its tiny book collection and no telephone was a main attraction in town.

“Except for one theater and the bay, there was nothing else to do,” said the retired city librarian. “That small library was an exciting place to be.”

Now, with four libraries housing more than 240,000 items and a new, 50,000-square-foot Central Library on the drawing board, the library network this year will celebrate its 70th anniversary with special events.

“Many people forget libraries after high school,” said LaDonna Kienitz, city librarian since 1986. “There are so many resources that people don’t know we have. We want them to know we’re here, we’re free, and we can enhance the quality of lives.”

In addition to books, today’s libraries have compact discs, videos, automated on-line catalogues and an extensive inter-library loan program. The libraries also host lectures, travelogues, forums, musicales, movies, storytelling and a literacy program.

Sheely said it all started in 1909 with a group of women and books at the Ebell Club on Balboa Boulevard.

“The Ebell Club was the one cultural organization in Newport Beach,” Sheely said. “They had a little lending library staffed with volunteers and offered the books as a basic collection for public use.”

Then in 1920 the city passed an ordinance making that collection of about 1,000 books the first library. In 1929 today’s Balboa Branch was built.

Sheely said she came to Newport Beach, then considered by some to be an “uncultured town,” in 1941.

“The library was so small then,” she said. “We had four people, no office space, no indoor restrooms and no telephone. We all did everything.”

Because there were no school libraries then, children came by the busload and teachers relied on the library for books.

“We were also overrun by cadets from the Santa Ana Air Base,” she said.

In 1947, Sheely became head librarian with an annual budget of $10,900 and plans to expand the library. With financial help from the Friends of the Library, a fund-raising organization formed in 1957, three more libraries were built.

Today, annual circulation in the city’s four libraries is about 900,000 items, and the shelves overflow, Kienitz said.

To gain space, city officials last year approved funds for a new library at Avocado Avenue and Coast Highway. That library is scheduled for completion in 1992.

“It’s come a long way from the hush-hush atmosphere of the old days,” Sheely said. “Now libraries are community centers, with people brought in from the outside by creating and giving the public, free of charge, many programs.”