Rare-Book Buys Costly for CSUN Dean

The dean of the Cal State Northridge library has been demoted to a job on the reference desk after campus officials discovered he had been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on rare and obscure books at the expense of materials more useful to students and faculty.

Discovery of the years-long spending spree by Norman Tanis came this winter, just as the library was forced to cut back hours and cancel subscriptions because of dwindling state education funds, university officials said. The CSUN library faces budget cuts as high as 20% for the school year beginning in fall.

Tanis, who was removed from his post in January, apparently used library money to indulge his interest in rare books, according to interviews with university officials and booksellers and a review of campus records.

While other Cal State university libraries report spending between $2,000 and $5,000 a year on rare books, Tanis annually spent an average of $70,000 on such purchases from 1986 to 1990. Most universities with such collections depend heavily on donated volumes, rare-book experts say.

Of the $281,000 Tanis spent on rare books during those four years, all but $4,000 came from library funds earmarked for general operating purposes such as salaries and standard reference-book acquisitions, school records show.

In the CSUN library budget, only about $20,000 was proposed by Tanis annually for special collections, which includes rare-book purchases.

“What he did falls into the category of extremely poor judgment,” said Don Cameron, author of a report by a committee that investigated library spending. He is currently chief administrator of the library until a new dean is hired.

“I think most librarians would agree--spending that amount of money on rare books is of limited value to students and faculty when at the same time you are canceling subscriptions, closing weekend hours, leaving positions unfilled and canceling book orders.”

Campus administrators say they do not have a complete tally of the money spent by Tanis. But they may order an appraisal for possible sale of the CSUN collection--which includes old books as well as new, limited-edition books costing as much as $6,000.

After the controversy surfaced, Tony Gardner, curator of the collection, said he has been unable to locate about 15 rare volumes with a total worth of $15,400.

An investigation by a committee of school administrators, faculty and the director of the Huntington Library in San Marino also found that Tanis diverted library money into a campus publishing operation that produced expensive limited-edition books for sale to collectors.

The school’s Santa Susana Press, in operation since 1973, was supposed to use money borrowed from the CSUN Foundation to print limited-edition volumes and pay back the money by selling the books. Instead, university officials found, Tanis used money from other library funds to pay back foundation loans when the press failed to sell the expected number of books.

In one instance, more than $15,000 in change from library copying machines was used to subsidize losses incurred by the operation of the Santa Susana Press, even though the copier money was supposed to be used to maintain and upgrade the machines, school records show.

While book dealers enjoyed a 40% discount on purchases from Santa Susana Press, in at least one case Tanis charged full price to the CSUN library, billing the school $240 for a copy of a book he sold to others for $135.

The Santa Susana Press, which was supposed to operate independently of the university, now owes the foundation about $33,000 for its most recent venture, a $375 book on French writer and artist Jean Cocteau.

Besides the library money diverted for its operation, the campus was also paying for Tanis’ time to operate the press.

“Tanis told us he was only working on it during lunch and evenings, but I think it would be impossible to be publisher without spending more time during the week,” said Philip Handler, dean of the School of Arts and a member of the investigating committee.

Handler and others on the committee agreed that diverting library money to subsidize the Santa Susana Press should not have been decided solely by Tanis.

Finally, the committee found that community residents who purchased borrowing privileges from the CSUN library, the San Fernando Valley’s largest, were also affected by Tanis’ actions. They were told their $30 annual membership fees in the school’s Bibliographic Society went to the purchase of library books.

But of the $85,000 or so raised that way in the past four years, only about $7,500 was used to buy books, school records show. Tanis spent the rest of the money on parties, luncheons and donations to professional publishing organizations, according to a report issued last month by the investigating committee.

Tanis, who has directed the CSUN library for 21 years, refused to discuss specific allegations made in the committee’s investigation. But he said he has done nothing wrong.

“I stand by what I have done and if given another chance I would do the same thing,” Tanis said in a telephone interview.

He said he had purchased rare books and operated the school’s Santa Susana Press for years without interference, assuming all that time that campus administrators were satisfied with his work.

“They can’t make the case I was doing something secret and undesirable when the people making the allegations were part of the group approving everything,” Tanis said.

Dave Perkins, who worked as a bibliographer under Tanis at the library said: “They allowed him to do it and gave him a hell of a lot of money to do it. He must have had the tacit permission to do it.”

Library records show four memos addressed to Tanis’ boss, Bob Suzuki, notifying him of rare-book purchases in 1989 and 1990.

But Suzuki, the university’s vice president of academic affairs, said through a spokeswoman that he did not receive the memos and did not know how much Tanis was spending on rare books or that he was diverting library funds to operate the Santa Susana Press.

The spokeswoman said it cannot be proved that the memos were ever sent because they don’t have “received” stamped on them. Suzuki recently was selected to be president of Cal Poly Pomona beginning in July.

Other school administrators say university deans routinely have great independence, with the power to spend their budgeted money with little scrutiny.

CSUN President James Cleary is on a three-month leave of absence and could not be reached for comment. He is empowered to remove deans and return them to a tenured position, as was done to Tanis, without explanation.

Under that arrangement, Tanis can retain his present job for life.

Those who worked with Tanis say he was trying to bring prestige to CSUN through its special collections and through the operation of a fine press.

“At most, he could be accused of indulging his passion, which is for beautiful books,” said Patrick Reagh, a master printer from Glendale who did many of the Santa Susana printings. “In the long run, people will look back and say what he did was a positive thing; those books are going to be around for 100 years.”

Kenneth Karmiole, a respected Santa Monica book dealer who sold Tanis tens of thousands of dollars worth of rare books, said the university could easily make a profit on those books if it chooses to sell them.

“It wasn’t money thrown away,” Karmiole said.

Others, such as Hollywood bookseller Allan Adrian, who sold Tanis more than $80,000 in rare books from 1988 to 1990, complain that they have lost a good customer with Tanis’ demotion. CSUN still owes Adrian about $4,100 for books delivered but never paid for, he said.

“As far as I was concerned, CSUN was getting to be one of the best collections for researchers, students and even the community,” Adrian said.

Even so, the library’s special collections room, where the rare books are housed, drew few visitors, on average about three patrons a day, school records show. And most of those visitors seek materials on human sexuality and Japanese internment camps--the library’s two most important collections and both built primarily with donated volumes.

William Moffett, director of the Huntington Library, which has one of the largest rare-book collections in the world, said he could not discern an acquisition pattern that would distinguish the CSUN collection. The purchases ranged from miniature books to antique Bibles to contemporary fine-press books.

“There are good reasons to spend money on expensive books,” Moffett said. “But in this case, you have a guy doing it behind closed doors. As a dean, he didn’t really have to explain what he was doing and he didn’t. There wasn’t a consensus and he found out the hard way what happens.”

Some Rare Books Purchased for CSUN

Examples of rare books purchased by former CSUN library dean Norman Tanis:

“Les Confessions” by St. Augustine, 1632. $125.

“Le Moyen De Parvenir” by Francis Beroalde De Vervill, 1870. $150.

“Breviarum Romanum ex Decreto Sacrosancti,” 1611. $250.

“Ulysses” by James Joyce, limited edition published in 1988. $6,000.

“Astronomicum Libri VIII” by Julius Firmicus Maternus, 1551. $500.

“Naval History of Great Britain,” 2 volumes, 1837. $125.

“The Madrid Choices,” by Leonardo da Vinci, 6 volumes, 1976 edition. $750.

19th-Century Burmese religious manuscript. $532.50

“Exorcists Manual,” 1592. $1,000.

“My First Summer in the Sierra” by John Muir. $785.

“Japanese Handmade Paper,” 3 volumes, 1975. $600.

“Birds of the Pacific Slope” by Andrew Jackson Grayson, 1986. $4,050.

“Fasciculus Temporum,” 1476. $4,500.