Head O.C. Librarian Gets Similar Job in L.A. System : Innovator: Elizabeth Martinez Smith’s 11 years in Orange County were marked by cultural diversity. She will be the first Latino to direct the L.A. system.

Orange County’s head librarian, who earned a reputation for cultivating multi-ethnic library services for a changing public, has been selected as Los Angeles’ city librarian, it was announced Tuesday.

Elizabeth Martinez Smith, 47, becomes the first Latino to direct the city’s 63-branch system. She was appointed to the position, with its $105,000 annual salary, after a nationwide search to replace city librarian Wyman Jones, who resigned to go into publishing.

It was Smith’s commitment to cultural diversity and outreach in libraries that appealed to Los Angeles, said Mayor Tom Bradley, who praised her work toward “people-friendly” libraries.

“Libraries are only useful if they are used,” Bradley said. “They cannot be utilized if people are intimidated by them.”

Smith, who lives in Upland, told The Times that working in Los Angeles holds special appeal because “the library has an opportunity to become a haven, a beacon for such a multicultural, diverse community,” she said.

“I want it to be a place that people will call their own, where they’ll find expressions of their own culture and ability to learn about others, whether that’s books, music or art, or literacy.”

Her Orange County colleagues wished her well on her new assignment.

“We can all take much pride in this recognition of Elizabeth’s abilities and accomplishments so amply demonstrated in her tenure as Orange County librarian,” General Services Agency Director R.A. Scott said in a memorandum to Orange County supervisors. “Elizabeth will be a tough act to follow.” Scott added later that he has not yet decided how to replace Smith.

She does not begin her new job until sometime in June, and Scott said that in the meantime, he will meet with the supervisors to discuss a replacement.

During her 11 years in Orange County, Smith oversaw construction of eight new branch libraries, and presided over a system whose cardholders number 58% of the population--one of the nation’s highest in a large system. Orange County operates 27 branches with a budget of about $24 million. The Los Angeles system, with its 63 branches, has a budget of $35 million and a cardholder rate of only about 20%.

Asked about how she would change that figure in Los Angeles, Smith said: “In Orange County, I think the demographics--generally higher education, high income levels--seem to further libraries, but I don’t think that’s the only answer. . . . That’s going to be one of our major concerns: every resident in this city should have a library card. (Ideally) if you register at school, you get a library card. If you pay for a phone, you get a library card. There must be ways you can do it.”

Smith will also be supervising the reemergence of the new $187-million Central Library, the heart of the city’s system, ravaged by two arson fires in 1986 and scheduled to reopen in 1993.

“I’m sure there’s going to be some (fiscal) constraints, but I think the city and the populace are behind the new library and community services.”

Smith’s innovations in Orange County, among them computer services, a cost-saving automation program, books by mail, ethnic author lecture series and on-site bookstores, earned the praise of this month’s California magazine, which called her efforts “daring and imaginative.”

Before her 11 years in the Orange County system, where her most recent salary was $78,000, she worked for 13 years in Los Angeles County’s public library.

Times staff writer Jim Newton contributed to this report from Orange County.