Check It Out : Libraries Aren’t Just for Books Anymore

The automatic doors of the Carlsbad City Library slide back to reveal the comforting presence of books waiting to be opened, the quiet tapping on computer keyboards and the orderly business of materials being checked out.

But this is not exactly an oasis from the madding crowd.

The library parking lot is full, and seemingly everyone south of San Clemente is inside. Here, proof abounds that libraries aren’t just for books anymore. They also trade in compact discs, videotapes, audio cassettes, books on tape, records and framed art--available at $3 for 3 months.

Three North County cities--Carlsbad, Oceanside and Escondido--maintain their own libraries. Although none has been handed a blank check to pay for operating expenses, each is thriving. They are not, like the San Diego City Library, gasping for air.

While San Diegans are stalled on the issue of whether or not to build a new central library, Oceanside is settling into brand-new quarters, Carlsbad is ready to break ground on a new building, and Escondido, with a facility only 10 years old, is looking toward expansion in the next few years.

In addition to North County’s three city libraries, there are 14 branch libraries under the umbrella of the San Diego County Public Library System.

The branches are much smaller and operate on shoestring budgets, some on less than $11,000 a year. These libraries--in communities from Fallbrook to Rancho Penasquitos--have smaller collections and can stay open less.

The independent status of the city libraries has given them a variety of funding options, whereas the county libraries must rely on a set percentage of property tax revenue.

Still, each of North County’s libraries, from the large to the small, reflects the character of the community it serves. All belong to a cooperative exchange program that allows patrons to draw on the resources of the others.

CARLSBAD

Although the Oceanside Library is a bit larger, the Carlsbad Library is pretty hard to top. It has diverse collections, loyal patrons, a broad funding base and the legacy of aggressive leadership.

There are 54,243 registered cardholders out of the 62,000 residents in Carlsbad, according to Collin Clark, a data coordinator for the California State Library, which administers state and federal funds for city libraries.

In 1989, the Carlsbad Library handled 103,480 reference questions and checked out 840,484 books, Clark said.

“That is unusually high, the highest of the North County cities,” Clark said. In most cities, the library is used (meaning materials are checked out) about four times per year per resident. In Carlsbad the per-capita figure is more than 13 times a year.

“It’s a matter of catering and predicting the needs of our community,” said Charlene Kennedy, one of six reference librarians at the Carlsbad Library. “This library is very popular with the people who live here, and one of the reasons they move to this community is because of this library.”

Library director Clifford Lange said Carlsbad’s good reputation has been there from the beginning, due largely to founder Georgina Cole. It was Cole was helped the library secede from the county system in 1956, led the construction of the existing building in 1967 and spent her life bringing quality library service to the growing community.

Besides developing a large children’s collection and implementing a summer reading program, Cole strove to make the library a small version of that of her alma mater, Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where cultural events, art exhibits, children’s art lessons and a museum are everyday activities.

In addition to more than 200,000 books in its general collection, Carlsbad has a separate 25,000-volume genealogy section, the largest in Southern California. A bilingual staff, a respectable section of large-print books and an active children’s program are other staples.

The library’s strengths run toward business; an inventory of more than 1,400 annual reports from California corporations are part of a special collection. Prospective job candidates can investigate a company before going to an interview, Kennedy said.

“We have tried to specialize in business because we do have a growing industrial community, especially out in the business parks,” Kennedy said. “And because we have a large retail community here--hotel, motel and restaurant--we have tried to develop collections to support them, too.”

Special services include shut-in delivery, an adult literacy program and a computerized data base that allows, for a fee, searches of more than 300 newspapers and periodicals nationwide. On a more homey level, the library has a collection of menus from local restaurants, a Christmas file filled with holiday tips and mail-order catalogues that Kennedy brings from home.

Because of the high use of the facility, located at the northern end of the city, designs for a large new library in the southern part of Carlsbad have been in the works for the past five years, Lange said. When the 64,000-square-foot facility is completed in two years, it will be second in size only to the downtown San Diego Library, he said.

Because of the city’s long and narrow geography, having two big libraries at either end made more sense than having one main facility with several smaller branches scattered around, Lange said.

“We hired a team of consultants in 1985, and they spent a year developing this master plan,” Lange said. “When we have the new building, we will renovate and remodel the existing library on Elm Avenue, and probably in the next 10 to 15 years we will double its size to 50,000 square feet.”

Construction funds for the new library will come in part from developers’ fees, Lange said. The operating budget will continue to come from the city’s general fund, made up of property, sales and transient occupancy taxes, he said.

Carlsbad’s annual library budget of more than $2 million is derived from $1,872,567 in local funds and $235,062 in state funds.

OCEANSIDE

Oceanside’s 30,000-square-foot library, which is housed within the new Civic Center complex at 3rd and Hill streets, has been very busy since its grand opening last December, assistant director Janet Johnston said.

The main library has more than 240,000 books, the most of any North County library. It checked out 645,743 books and other materials in 1989, and its strengths include business, parenting, religion and law and Constitution materials.

In addition to its main stacks, Oceanside has more than 1,000 videos, 700 periodical subscriptions, more than 500 maps and 4,000 pictures.

The library sports a separate area for young adults, as well as a children’s section. The latter allows privacy during story hours and is equipped with its own restrooms and drinking fountains.

One unique program, called Community Library Interaction with Parents, offers parents a special collection of materials on everything from family planning and prenatal care to child rearing and tips on how to survive adolescence. A monthly newsletter compiled by librarians offering tips and reading suggestions as part of the program.

Outreach is another aspect of the parenting program. The library loans books to the boys and girls clubs, Casa de Amparo and other community organizations, and, in turn, the groups lend the parenting paperbacks out to young mothers and others who aren’t able to get to the library.

This is also Oceanside’s first year in a grant-funded program to provide specialized library service to the Latino community. The city was awarded nearly $205,000 in federal funds administered through the California State Library.

Called Adelante, (the Spanish word for forward ) the program provides a large collection of Spanish materials for adults and children. It is staffed with a bilingual librarian and an assistant; among other things, it helps Latinos get a library card and understand the many facets of the facility.

In January, a catering-style truck will go into predominantly Latino areas of Oceanside, peddling Spanish-language books.

“Many new Hispanics to the community are very reticent about going into trucks and vans, but this truck has one side that opens up and has books and materials from the library,” Johnston said. “The other side will also open up and have a video screen and materials that, along with a visiting public health nurse, work with the people relating to health matters. It’s the library and public health working together,” she said.

Books in French, Tagalog, Norwegian and German can also be found at the Oceanside Library.

There are 91,436 registered cardholders out of a city population of 117,600, according to the state statistics. Per-capita use is about 5 1/2 times a year.

Like Carlsbad, Oceanside receives local and state monies. It has an annual operating budget of about $2 million from the state and $124,000 from the city’s general fund.

“Libraries today have so much to offer,” Johnston said. “When people realize what libraries can do for them in so many different ways, they get excited, and that’s what we want.”

ESCONDIDO

With an inventory of 170,000 books, videos, compact discs and books on tape, the Escondido Library is the smallest city-operated library in North County, but it’s aggressively used by its community and offers several programs.

On any given Saturday afternoon, the buzz among the stacks rivals that of a coffeehouse.

Warm colors bathe the walls in a decor that is decidedly Southwestern. A concert-quality grand piano recently donated by the Friends of the Escondido Library for community recitals adds to the charm.

“People do make themselves at home here, and that’s the way we want it to be,” librarian Laura Mitchell said.

Homey touches aside, Escondido is a highly functional library, Mitchell said. An integrated computer system that includes the circulation, inventory and patron records, along with a computerized card catalogue system, help with efficiency.

“People can look on the computer for the books or subjects or authors they want, but they can also find out if the books are on the shelf or checked out,” Mitchell said. To help patrons make the transition from cards to computers, the library has hired part-time employees to train people in how to use the system, she said.

Catering to kids is an Escondido forte. In addition to regular story and craft times during the month, pajama-clad children are welcomed to a free bedtime story hour every Wednesday night, Mitchell said.

Perhaps one of Escondido’s more significant community efforts has been its adult literacy program. Once a volunteer-only program, it recently hired a full-time coordinator to recruit people from the community who would like to tutor adults.

“I really think libraries are getting away from being a warehouse for books and we’re becoming a community information place, a cultural center,” Mitchell said. “All these different roles are something we’re getting into now.”

Of the 99,000 citizens in Escondido, 49,022 are registered cardholders. Total circulation in 1989 was 614,331. Per-capita use is about six times a year.

The library’s annual budget, comosed of local and state funds, is slightly more than $1 million.

County librarian Catherine E. Lucas said Proposition 13 was the beginning of the troubles for the county library system, but added that relief measures are being examined.

By midsummer of 1991, the San Marcos, Vista and Del Mar branches will know whether they will receive funds from Proposition 85, a state bond measure that gives money to libraries in communities that can contribute a certain percentage, she said.

Currently, funds for the county library come from 1.5% of property taxes, Lucas said. This is in contrast to the property, sales and miscellaneous taxes that feed into the bigger city-operated libraries.

“Even though we are very poor and the tax money we collect simply hasn’t kept up with the growth, what we have is ours, it doesn’t go into the county general fund,” Lucas said.

Consultants have suggested holding off on considering a new ballot measure to allocate more library funds because they feel it would not be successful at this time, Lucas said.

“We serve both cities and unincorporated areas, and we don’t have a large area that people can concentrate on--like the downtown San Diego Library or the municipal efforts of Carlsbad or Oceanside,” Lucas said.

In addition to books, each branch library has periodical and newspaper subscriptions, videos that rotate between the libraries every month and books on tape.

Adult literacy books, access to special cassettes for the blind from the Braille Institute in Los Angeles, children’s programs and inter-library loans are also staples.

Loretta McKinney, community libraries director for the system’s north region, said personal service is something North County librarians pride themselves on.

“We do have something you can’t find elsewhere, at least in a lot of other libraries, and that is a very dedicated staff who, through their own integrity, are patron-oriented people and really seek to serve the patron and see that they are satisfied,” McKinney said.

McKinney, a professional librarian since 1983, says that over the past few years, she has seen a shift in North County, from requests for fiction to a need for nonfiction.

“It’s the range from personal to business to school, and in school there’s no age limit,” McKinney said. “I’ve had little kids coming in with reports that I didn’t do until late high school, early college.”

She credits the highly educated population of the region with the need for solid information.

Here’s what’s going on at a few of the 14 branches:

CARDIFF

With just a little more than 11,000 fiction and nonfiction books, Cardiff is the smallest branch in North County, but its size enhances its homey atmosphere. Work from local artists adorns the walls of the library, which is frequented by young families and children.

Fully automated, the Cardiff facility has the ability to computer-network with larger North County libraries with in-house reference librarians. A staff of four is also available to handle such common--and not so common--questions as “Where is Peru?” and “How do you grow olives?”

Branch manager Faith Niles said she and her staff do not like to leave questions unanswered and that so far there have been few reference orders they haven’t been able to fill.

“We have a screenwriter who comes here, and he’s been getting every kind of book on Hong Kong and so I’m used to getting him things on Chinese cooking, geography, whatever,” Niles said. “But then one day he asked for a book of knock-knock jokes and I asked him, ‘What? You mean in Chinese?’ ”

RANCHO PENASQUITOS

Within the next year, the Rancho Penasquitos branch will move from its existing 2,700-square-foot space to a new 20,000-square-foot facility and will be equipped with video materials and meeting rooms available to the public. Inventory is now about 20,000 items, including magazines, newspapers and paperbacks.

Because of the large number of children who visit the library, there are volunteers who conduct story times every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 10 a.m. Crafts and entertainment times are also scheduled during the month.

There is a large selection of books with juvenile themes, but because of the lack of space, high school-level reference materials are not plentiful.

DEL MAR

About 22,000 volumes make up the 75-year-old Del Mar branch. A lack of space prohibits it from keeping local newspapers longer than two weeks, but there are more than 60 periodical subscriptions available with a back inventory of about a year.

Because there are two schools nearby, the Del Mar library is often inundated on weekday afternoons with members of the homework brigade. Head librarian JoAnn Smith says it’s like having schoolwork of her own to do.

“We get a lot of homework here and we try real hard to answer each question,” Smith said. “If we can’t answer it here, my resource reference center is the Vista Library, and they can take on the question.”