Library’s Buy of Rare Books Questioned : Reading: Some officials say the $400,000 should have been spent on popular titles rather than antique volumes on birds.

A city audit released Tuesday raised questions about the Los Angeles Public Library’s purchase of $400,000 in rare books at a time when the financially strapped library is trying to rebuild a collection devastated by a 1986 fire.

The expenditure has divided the city’s librarians, some of whom think the public would have been better served if the money had been used to buy 20,000 popular books for about $20 each, according to the audit conducted by the City Administrative Office.

In the time since the rare books were purchased, the audit said, no one has asked to see them.

The books are antique volumes about rare birds and have been bought since June, 1989, when the library paid $275,683 for 17 titles offered at an auction. Several recently purchased books cost more than $10,000 apiece, and the most expensive single purchase was a $29,000 set of books, the audit said.

“It seemed to be the subject of some fairly intense internal debate,” said Marc Girard, an analyst who worked on the audit. “A number of librarians have told us that the money could have been as well--or maybe even better--spent for materials of more general interest.”

Nearly all the branch librarians interviewed during the wide-ranging audit complained about the rare-book purchases, Girard said, while their colleagues downtown at the Central Library defended the acquisitions as a rare opportunity for the library.

The audit did not criticize the purchases, but recommended that in the future the library staff should report such major purchases to the Board of Library Commissioners. The commission was informed of the purchases after the fact because library officials needed $400,000 from a $10-million Save the Books Fund to pay for the bird books. The fund was set up to replace volumes lost in the 1986 fire that destroyed 375,000 books representing 20% of the Central Library’s collection.

Martha Katsufrakis, a member of the commission, said Tuesday she is pleased with the bird books, which she called “a very, very important purchase.”

“We just didn’t know about it in advance,” she said. “We would have preferred to have done a little more research on it.”

Subsequent purchases have been of a more general nature, Katsufrakis said.

But Library Commissioner Doug Ring, who joined the panel about six months ago, said Tuesday he has doubts about the purchase.

“It seemed to me that the money that was raised in the Save the Books campaign was to replace books that were destroyed by the fire, not to provide for general collecting,” Ring said. “I was disturbed that the expenditure was made.”

Betty Gay, director of the Central Library, called the purchases a “unique opportunity” to obtain valuable and unusual books and said she was aware of the criticism from branch librarians.

“We did not do a good enough job of explaining to people throughout the system what the thinking was,” Gay said.

About 1,100 ornithological titles were lost in the 1986 fire, Gay said, along with a large part of the library’s natural history collection.

The recent purchases came largely from the estate of H. Bradley Martin, who died several years ago at 89 after building a “fabulous collection” of books about rare birds, she said.

Much of the Martin collection was put up for auction, and the library, which normally spends about $25,000 a year on rare books, decided to make some major purchases, she said.

One was a four-volume set of 207 hand-colored etched plates by William Jardine and Prieaux John Selby that was produced in 19 parts between 1826 and 1843. The price was $7,000, she said.

A set called “The Natural History of Uncommon Birds, and of Some Other Rare and Undescribed Animals, Quadrupedes, Reptiles, Fishes, Insects, etc.” cost $21,000, she said. The four volumes, by George Edwards, were produced between 1739 and 1751.

The books are kept in a vault at the Central Library downtown and are available to the public under the supervision of library staff. Gay said she hopes publicity about the books will prompt the public to seek them out.